Mistakes
by BeyondSanity12
Summary: Danny always did his best to defend the citizens of Amity Park. On one unfortunate night, however, he makes a terrible mistake: he kills a man.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

"You good on the eastern side, Sam?" Danny asked through his walkie talkie.

"No sign of ghost activity here."

"How about you,Tuck? All quiet on the western front?"

"Sure thing—hey! Did you just make a reference to a book?" Tuck gasped.

Sam let out an aggravated sigh and chimed in, "Don't be too shocked, it's a movie too."

The ghost boy smiled and replied, "Am I not allowed to read any more? Lancer did assign it as homework you know."

"Danny doing the assigned reading? Sounds like a sign of the apocalypse to me," the tech geek teased through his rudimentary communication device, "It already took the Fenton Phones..."

"You think the end is nigh and you're worried about technology?" Danny exclaimed, "Great news, Sam, he's not possessed after all!"

Sam wasn't incredibly amused. "Will you two shut up for a second? I'm picking something up on the radar."

Danny sighed. So much for actually finishing the reading. "Is it big?"

"Pretty muted, actually, but definitely something." Not that this particular device was famous for being accurate; the only reason they were using it now was because of that incident with Technus. The sad hunk of metallic failure was buried so deeply in the Fenton's ghost lab that it somehow escaped the carnage. Escaped or was spared due to lack of real value.

"Where is it?" Tuck asked.

"It's approaching the school...I think? It's in that general area."

"Why don't you just go home, Tuck?" Danny suggested, "Sam and I can handle this one." The school was a good seven miles from Tuck's location, and the mopeds were down too. Walking that far in the winter weather was just infeasible.

"Are you sure?" he asked, barely failing to conceal his relief.

"Yeah," Danny laughed, "Go read that book."

…..

The school was pretty quiet this close to eleven. As Sam cursed the ghost for going inside, Danny cursed his curfew. He had ten minutes. Ten minutes to kick some ghost butt, fly Sam home, and get through his own door before his parents grounded him and set his curfew back to ten again.

"We could just phase in…" he suggested, gesturing toward the solid wall with an invisible arm.

"And have you get zapped by the security system again? No thanks."

"It's probably still down. Like the Fenton Phones."

Sam's eyes narrowed in his direction. He was not taking this seriously enough at all, lounging several feet in the air and staring at his watch. "I see you're still in love with your birthday present," she remarked scathingly.

"It came with the extended curfew, which I definitely don't want to lose right now. Do we even have to be here? It's probably a spectral butterfly or something," he implored, now hanging completely upside down. The falling snow matched his hair, and the December wind was blowing it all over.

 _Talk to me when you get a haircut,_ Sam thought bitterly.

She looked worriedly down at the Fenton Fiend Radar. The blip was glowing more brightly now, and the weight in her stomach told her not to disregard that. She shoved the thing in his face. "It could hurt someone."

"At eleven o'clock Sunday night?"

"Near midnight Monday morning, you mean. There'll be kids here tomorrow," she reminded him. Though it felt overdue, Christmas break hadn't come just yet.

He groaned and returned to an upright sitting position mid-air. "We phase in, we catch the ghost butterfly, we phase out. Sound good?"

It did not sound good to her, but it sounded better. Danny was in too much of a hurry to argue, and honestly so was she. "Fine," she relented, "But we have to be careful."

He took her hand and they stepped intangibly through the wall.

No alarms sounded; that was a good first step. As a precaution, just in case the security cameras were online and nothing else, they remained invisible while they drifted down the black hallway toward where the blip was. Just outside the guidance counselor's office, white breath escaped Danny's mouth.

 _Spectra,_ Danny thought with a scowl, _This might take a while._

He dipped his head through the door and confirmed his suspicions. His mouth opened to say something witty about psycho psychiatrists and old haunts, but remembering his curfew shut him up. Sam pulled out the Fenton thermos, angled it through the door, and began to twist off the lid.

Suddenly, a blast from behind broke Danny's concentration and sent Sam's thermos flying. The pair ended up on their stomachs on the carpet. Danny rubbed his head and looked up at the charred, now door-less doorway.

"Bertrand as the guidance counselor? Really?" he asked tiredly.

Spectra's little shape shifter had morphed itself into the shape of their fresh-out-of-college guidance counselor. He was now short and chubby (not that that was incredibly different from Bertrand's normal form), with blond hair and a little goatee Sam always thought was stupid.

"Yes, really," Spectra bragged indignantly, "High schoolers are the most miserable and pathetic…"

"Yada, yada, yada," the ghost boy mocked, floating upward into a standing position, "You think people are going to fall for that trick again? Please!"

Sam surveyed the situation. Spectra shot a little higher in the air and glared at Danny. Bertrand, in the slightly glowing but still pretty convincing form of Mr. Baker, blocked their only exit. To make matters even worse, the thermos had rolled to a stop in the back corner of the office. Several feet away from anyone who might need to use it.

Spectra sneered, "You think anyone in your stupid little town would notice something different about _him,_ when they can't even see what's right in front of them about _you?"_

Danny tilted his head to the side and retorted, "I thought the administration told you, _Dr._ Spectra. You've been let go, you just had too many sick days…"

That destroyed Spectra's pretentiously superior attitude very effectively. She shrieked and lunged for him with her claw-like hands. Soon ectoblasts were flying everywhere and bookshelves were toppling over. Hoping to control the damage, Danny shot intangibly through the wall toward the football field, baiting his assailant to follow. _At least they took it outside,_ Sam thought snidely.

Realizing her opportunity had come, she sprinted toward thermos in the corner. Within seconds, she had it in her hands and open. Bertrand took a few steps toward her as if to do something about it, but otherwise offered little resistance. Sam didn't waste any time on witty banter once she was in position; she sucked the imposter right into the containment device.

Then she was alone with the books. _This is always the worst part,_ she thought, _Waiting._

Turns out she didn't have to wait long. Just as quickly as they'd left, they zipped back into the room. Spectra flung the bruised Danny against a section of wall that wasn't covered in bookcases and held him up by his neck.

"But who would ever believe you?" she hissed, continuing one of her soul-sucking rants, "You've spent what, three years of your life defending these people? These worthless, sniveling humans? Three long years fighting off every baddie and nuisance that came along, and for what? They'd all turn on you, you know, every single one…"

"Sam," Danny choked, "The thermos!"

That snapped her out of her haze. After a long moment of fumbling with the lid, she whipped open the thermos one more time. It was very odd. Usually Spectra let out more of a wail when she was captured. This time, she laughed. Somehow it unsettled Sam more than anything she'd seen previously.

Danny fell abruptly to the ground, still coughing. Sam didn't think he was seriously hurt, but he was definitely more beat up than usual; he managed to rise to his feet. She hated the effect Spectra had on him. She could spin anyone into a crying mess, but she was especially skilled at damaging the young halfa. Danny took a few shaky steps toward her but stopped in front of the doorway.

Suddenly she noticed a figure in said doorway. It was Mr. Baker. The real Mr. Baker.

Danny whirled around to face the wide-eyed guidance counselor and lifted a fist overflowing with electric green ectoplasmic energy.

It took her a few extra seconds to figure out what was going on. Before she could even muster out a, "Danny, wait!" he'd thrown the enormous blast directly into the shocked man's chest.

For Sam, the moment was very slow. The raw eruption of power seemed to take its sweet time to make contact. When it did, it sent Mr. Baker flying into the lockers at the other side of the deserted hall. A poignant crack resonated in her ears when his head hit, and the horrible thump of his body hitting the linoleum would haunt her forever.

For Danny, the moment wasn't so different from any other moment in his life as a ghost hunter. Bertrand showed little resistance and did surprisingly little damage to the lockers. Just a slight dent; barely noticeable really. Then, after he fell, he didn't get up. Danny, who in the process of the attack had stepped into the hall itself, turned back to his friend and reached out to her. "My parents are going to kill me for being this late!"

She stared at his gloved hands for several seconds.

 _He wants the thermos,_ she realized. Sam just clutched it more tightly.

"Are you okay Sam?" Danny asked, his confused eyes flitting between her and the enemy he was sure would stand and attack any second now, "Did he say something to you? Did he hurt you?"

She realized she'd started shaking and yearned desperately for a rewind button.

"Please, he'll be up any second now," he urged, alternating glances increasing in panic.

"Danny," her voice cracked. Did she have to tell him? Surely he'd figure it out without her. Would that be worse? She took a moment to absorb Danny's face. He was undoubtedly concerned, but he didn't know. He didn't know what he'd done, and she knew he would be devastated. The only thing she could muster out was, "Danny…"

There was blood visible on the floor now. Red not green, forming too quickly into a puddle around poor Mr. Baker's head.

He froze at the sight. Though he never needed to breathe in ghost form, Sam had never seen him so still.

"Why is there blood?" he asked softly, though he knew the answer. Sam shook her head hopelessly; she was crying now. "Why is there blood?" he repeated, more loudly this time.

He stepped backward, and Sam thought he was going to fall over. He looked at his shaking hands and whispered, "Oh God…"

"We have to go, Danny."

He looked back at her, neon green eyes wild. "Mr. Baker…"

"He's dead," she cried. No one loses that much blood and lives, never mind the odd angle of his neck. "We have to go."

"Oh God…. Oh God…." he breathed, turning his back to the body and covering his eyes with his hands.

Meanwhile, Sam was starting to regain her composure. Seeing her best friend the hero break down shocked her into responsibility mode.

"Go intangible. Now, Danny, now!"

When he didn't respond she grabbed his wrists and took them away from his eyes. Her violet ones stared at his as she tried to convey the urgency of this situation. How important it was that he didn't fall apart now. He still wouldn't look at her. Releasing his shaky wrists, she put a firm hand on each side of his face and shifted his head until his only possible defense from her stare was to close his eyes.

"This is what's going to happen," she instructed him, "You're going to go intangible. You will fly us to Tucker's house and we will get this whole thing sorted out. Okay?"

He took a deep, shuddering breath before complying.

The flight to Tucker's house seemed to take no time at all. Maybe Danny flew extra fast, or maybe their minds were too full to register the journey. Too soon, Danny swooped into Tucker's room, set Sam down, and phased back into human form.

Tucker was sitting on his bed. Reading, it seemed. With a box of tissues.

"Dammit, Danny, you should've warned me about this book—" he stopped abruptly when he noticed the pair's haunted faces, then resumed, "What happened?"

Sam glanced at Danny. He'd recovered a little; the shaking had subsided, but now he was too still again. He closed his eyes again when Tucker asked.

"How fast can you hack into the school's security files?" she asked sternly.

"Lightning fast!" The technology expert stood and made his way to his computer. He began work before reiterating, "What happened?"

"There was—an altercation with Spectra," Sam explained slowly, "She had Bertrand posing as—as Mr. Baker. Danny fought off Spectra, and while he was gone I nabbed Bertrand. Danny came back and saw…well, the real Mr. Baker."

"He's dead," Danny finished, "I killed him, and he's dead."

Tucker stopped typing and looked up at his friends, bewildered. "Dead? What do you mean dead?"

"Don't stop!" Sam exclaimed, "If the security cameras were on, you have to delete everything. No one can ever see what happened. Ever."

He seemed to agree, as he returned to work with renewed fervor. While his fingers flew, he tried to contain the many, many questions bubbling in his head. Once he had access to the security feed (which had indeed been on), he put on his headphones, turned the screen away from his two best friends in the entire world, and watched.

In all these years, no one had ever died as a direct result of a ghost attack. Ghosts enjoyed spreading terror. They spoke of doom and of skinning things alive, but they didn't seem to do much killing. At least, not while Danny Phantom was around. Not while the town hero was there to stop them.

The trio was silent until it was done. Until Tucker had seen, until it was all more than just deleted. Even after Tucker had completely shut down his computer and leaned back in his seat, no one spoke.

The quiet was horrible for Danny. His chest felt like it could explode, and his throat was so tight he wasn't sure why he hadn't suffocated yet. He'd killed a man, a man named Something Baker. _He'd killed a man, and he hadn't even known his first name._ Surely Sam and Tucker must hate him now. After all the time they'd devoted to stopping the monsters, had he just become one? Surely they should have known this would happen. He should have known this would happen. In fact, he wouldn't be surprised if one of Clockwork's minions showed up right then and there to smite him from existence. And he wouldn't resist.

The human ghost boy began emitting short, pained gasps. Tears spilled over a dam and down his pale face. Sam guided him over to Tucker's bed and sat down. This time, out of immediate danger, he might have actually fallen over. Unsure of what to say, she put a gentle hand on his back. Tucker rushed over to sit beside them. The three high school seniors must have been quite the sight.

The door creaked open and Mrs. Foley peaked in. "Is everything okay in here?" she asked. Then she noticed Sam and Danny. "When did you two get here?"

"We're just doing homework, Mom," Tucker sniffed, holding up his battered copy of _All Quiet on the Western Front_ by Erich Maria Remarque, "It's for English."

Mrs. Foley nodded a little, apparently buying it for the most part. She knew from experience that it was a very heart-wrenching book. "I'm going to have to have a talk with Mr. Lancer…." she muttered as she left them alone again.

Once the cessation of her footsteps indicated that she was once again downstairs, the trio sighed. "It wasn't your fault," Tucker assured Danny, "It was an honest mistake, anyone could have done it."

 _Not just anyone could have thrown him into a wall with so much force that he died._

Sam took this as an opportunity to confess her perceived guilt. "If it's anyone's fault, it's mine. I'm the one who caught Bertrand and didn't tell you. If I'd just spoken up a little sooner, this never would have happened!"

Danny's shoulders heaved again. "No, Sam, it was all—"

"Can we not play the blame game right now?" Tucker begged, "How about a movie marathon?" Before either of his friends could protest, he leapt up and grabbed a short stack of DVDs beside his television. The case on the very top read: Dead Teacher 7: Horror in the Hallway. He promptly set the stack down; not happening.

The unfortunate coincidence only further upset the already distraught teenage boy on the bed. The dark irony of the situation brought the hysteria in his throat to a boiling point, and his soft sobs turned into hysterical sob-laughter.

This alarming change reminded them that they weren't safe yet. The body probably hadn't even been discovered yet, and they _had_ to avoid drawing attention to themselves.

Though it hurt him to do so, Tucker hushed him. "Dude, you have to be quiet. My parents are gonna get even more suspicious."

"Parents!" Danny nearly shouted, "My parents, m-my curfew—I have to go!" He hopped up and strode over to the window. White rings began to form around his waist, but Sam stopped him.

"You're in no condition to go home right now." She didn't want to leave him alone.

"Yeah, and if you're going to go you have to use the door. My mom saw you here, she's going to have to see you leave. I don't want to have to explain your ability to jump out of windows and not be a pancake," Tucker added.

Sam sighed; he would have to go, wouldn't he? "I'll walk you home," she offered.

"I'll walk you… To the door?"

Danny cracked a slight smile. Spectra was wrong; his friend's would never turn on him. "Thanks, guys."

So Sam and Tuck flanked their emotionally shaken friend as they descended the stairs. They'd hoped to make it out the door before being noticed by the Foley parents, but they were not so lucky.

"You're parents just called," Mr. Foley relayed as he swept into the foyer.

"Whose?" Sam inquired, "Mine or his?"

"Both. You're going to stay here tonight; the town is on lockdown."

"Why? What happened?" Tucker exclaimed. How long had it been? Wasn't this too soon for anyone to know? Maybe it was something else.

His father sighed. "There as a murder at the high school."

Danny and Tucker froze; if he knew, everyone must know. They hoped Mr. Foley would put it down as shock rather than guilt.

"A murder!" Sam gasped, "Who was killed?"

"The guidance counselor, Mr. Baker. The Fentons are investigating right now."

Sam's head tilted and she gave her friends a slight nudge. It would be weird if only she talked, when the three of them were supposedly equally affected.

"Does that mean it was a ghost, Dad?" Tucker asked shakily.

"They think so. Might've been more than one," he relayed solemnly, carefully gauging each teen's reaction. He was no therapist, but he realized that such an incident could have a profoundly negative effect on the impressionable teenage psyche. At least, that's what Jazz Fenton said on the phone; she'd sounded especially concerned for her little brother. "Are you feeling alright, Danny?"

"He's been feeling nauseous all day," Sam explained, "We wanted to get him home where he could be near his own toilet."

Maybe that's why Jazz had been so concerned. "Aw, that's too bad. Honey," he called out, "Do we have any Pepto Bismol?"

"Sure thing," Mrs. Foley replied from the kitchen. The teenagers' silence made all of the other sounds very clear. Mrs. Foley opened a somewhat squeaky cabinet, rummaged around for a few seconds, and closed it again. Then there was the slight pop of a newly opened bottle.

"Here you go, sweetie," she said as she offered Danny a dose of pink.

"Thanks, Mrs. F," he whispered. He downed it then remarked, "Delicious."

"You look awfully pale," she remarked as she put a hand on his forehead, "And chilly too. Is the furnace not working upstairs?"

"No, Mom, it's fine," Tuck assured her.

"Hm," she said thoughtfully, "I think it's time for bed. Why don't you two go on upstairs? I'll help Sam set up the guest bedroom."

The trio exchanged uncertain looks. They certainly did not want to be separated tonight, but they were also sure Sam's parents had dictated it when they condoned her overnight stay.

Sam sighed and told them, "Good night," as they ascended the stairs. She was almost seventeen years old, but she would've liked to have been seven again. Near-adulthood was hard enough when her only extracurricular was catching ghosts; now she had to worry about covering up a rather unfortunate death.

…

Tucker didn't know what to say. He was in his bed, and Danny was not-sleeping on the extra mattress on the floor. Usually when they had a sleepover, they might talk for hours after turning off the lights. That is, if they didn't spend the entire time playing video games and shoving junk food in their mouths.

There were plenty of things he could have said. Goofy things, blase things that would be wildly inappropriate given the situation.

"At least we'll have a day off from school tomorrow, Danny!"

"Maybe they'll give you a starring role in the next _Dead Teacher_ flick. _Dead Teacher 10: Midnight Murder? Monday Murder? Mystical Midnight Murder on a Monday?"_

"Did you really have to kill the guidance counselor, Danny? Cuz we're all gonna need some therapy after this."

Come to think of it, none of them were that funny.

Still, he had to say something. No one would be able to sleep in that awkward silence. What he really ended up saying was, "Good night, Danny."

 **I'm new to the Phandom, but follow me on Tumblr (same name) to see upcoming fanart and fanfic updates!**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Mrs. Foley wasn't really shocked to see Jazz Fenton on her doorstep shortly after six the next morning. The redhead was bundled up in Fenton Ghost Gear, only her eyes peeking out between her Fenton Hat and her Fenton Scarf.

"Is Danny here, Mrs. Foley?" she asked, eyes wide and inquisitive. Yet, something in the angle of her eyebrows indicated that her eagerness stemmed from concern rather than enthusiasm. She was here, though, before the sun had even risen, in the wind, the chill, and the icy rain.

"Yeah, he's probably still sleeping," she replied. She allowed Jazz to slip past her into the house, and the teenager took a few seconds to absorb the warmth as the door closed. On a normal day, the two might have enjoyed a nice cup of tea or coffee, but today she was on a mission. Find Danny, then figure out what on Earth happened at Casper High last night.

"Do you mind if I wake him up? I'm supposed to take him home."

"Of course. It's probably best; he wasn't feeling very well yesterday."

Jazz's lips tightened. "What was wrong with him?"

"Nausea was the main complaint, but he looked exhausted. We gave him some Pepto Bismol. I don't know if it helped."

 _Thank goodness I'm here,_ Jazz thought. Her semesters in college were shorter than her high school ones had been; while her little brother still had about two weeks left before break, Jazz was free to spend some time at home. With her crazy parents and the eternally troubled Danny.

"Care for a coffee, Jazz?" Mr. Foley asked as the young woman stepped into the kitchen, "You're up pretty early." Pretty early indeed. The Foleys were still in their pajamas, and the coffee looked fresh.

That did sound appealing, but she knew she had to decline. She had to get Danny.

"No, thank you, I really need to get Danny home."

Mrs. Foley shook her head. "Your parents must be worried sick. Have they caught the ghost yet?"

"No."

"I'm sure they'll catch it soon," Tucker's dad assured her. By the look on his face though, one could tell he was not sure at all. The Fentons, while renowned as excellent researchers and inventors, were not known for being incredibly competent ghost hunters. You could practically hear an _I hope_ tacked onto the end of Mr. Foley's sentence.

"It's not like they'll be alone," Mrs. Foley added, "We've got Phantom and whoever Mayor Masters hires. The Guys in White might step in too."

So they hadn't heard the allegations yet. Good.

Jazz plastered a smile on her face and nodded. She was feeling too warm now. "Is Danny upstairs?"

"I'll go get him," Mrs. Foley offered, "They stayed up pretty late last night. Doing homework of all things!" _That's a lie,_ Jazz thought immediately, _Obviously a cover._

"Wouldn't be surprised if it took him a while to get up and get his stuff together," her husband continued, "Are you sure you don't want a coffee?"

She thought about if for a second. They were probably right, and she didn't want to stand around like a jerkface while her grumpy brother zombie muttered about how terrible mornings and big sisters are. "Sure," she relented. Even through her Fenton Gloves, the mug was pleasantly warm and soothing; she'd had a long night.

Turns out the Foleys were wrong. Danny was downstairs with Tucker in two minutes, though they definitely looked the part of sun-starved, sleep-deprived teenagers. Any other time Jazz would've assumed they'd stayed up late after patrol playing video games or watching horror movies.

"Coffee, kids?" Mr. Foley asked. Jazz had barely downed a third of her mug, but she was too anxious to stick around.

"No, thanks," Tucker yawned, "I want to go back to bed, and Danny still isn't feeling well."

That made Jazz panic just a little bit more. She already knew that what happened last night didn't end well. If he was still injured this morning…. She assessed him visually for bruises, stiff movements, and odd green or red stains, then was thankful to find nothing more alarming than yesterday's wrinkled clothes.

Danny crossed over to stand in front of Jazz. His eyes were dull, skin pale, eyes baggy.

He couldn't look her in the eye either. She believed you could communicate a lot through mere looks, and she'd been hoping for some assurance. A comforting smile, maybe a slight nod to answer her unspoken question. _Are you okay?_

Still, he kept staring at his feet. Something fell in her chest.

"Can we go now?" he asked flatly.

"Sure," she responded. Then she looked around. "Where's your coat?"

"Didn't bring it."

"No wonder you're sick!" Mrs. Foley exclaimed as she moved to an overcrowded coat rack. After some shifting she pulled out a decent blue jacket, a skull hat (part of Tucker's Christmas gift from Sam last year), and a nondescript pair of black gloves. "Take some of Tucker's old stuff. It's not like he plays in the snow much anymore anyway."

While Danny suited up, Jazz fondly recalled an incident just a few days ago when Tucker was thrown rather unceremoniously into a snowbank. She'd always been bad at aiming the Fenton Bazooka, and Technus had had a bunch of tentacle things. It was all very confusing, and anyone could have done it.

She was still in her memories when Danny glided past her and out the front door. "I'd better take him home," she told the Foleys quickly, "Thanks for watching him!"

By the time Jazz skidded outside, Danny had climbed into the passenger's seat of her car. They were already driving away before she could find the courage to say something.

"Did you hear what happened at the school last night?"

As Danny considered his answer, he remembered what he had heard at the school last night. He'd heard the electric charge of his own ectoblast and its quick whir through the air. He heard Mr. Baker clack into the lockers and thunk to the ground. He'd heard the silence that followed. He'd heard every second of his own damnation.

"What did you hear?" he asked quietly, tiredly. He did not want to be having this conversation. Not now, not ever.

Jazz took a deep breath. She had to find a way to summarize their parents' beliefs without sounding accusatory. Of course, she didn't believe for a second that Danny Phantom (her little brother—the one who sacrificed his entire academic career to save people) was capable of doing what they'd said. He'd been framed numerous times before, but he wasn't getting away with this one without an explanation. He needed a culprit, an alibi, a story, something. Or the people of Amity (their parents at the front of the line) would tear him apart.

"Mr. Baker is dead," she responded. No reaction. "He was killed." He tilted his head toward the window. "They're saying a ghost did it." His head tilted downward this time, just slightly. "They're saying Danny Phantom did it." Was that a sniff? Did he have a cold? Was he crying? Crap.

They arrived at FentonWorks but Jazz just kept driving. Their parents were there, and they had to get their stories straight.

Nobody else was out driving. It was early, and after the events of last night most people had decided to stay inside with their families to browse . No one was around to notice them driving in nonsensical circles around Amity.

"Not that I believe them," Jazz spluttered when Danny didn't say anything. Honestly, she hadn't given them any credence until her little brother refused to speak. Obviously there were dozens of logical explanations. "I know you'd never hurt anyone." _On purpose._ "I'm sure the whole thing is just one big misunderstanding."

Finally, he looked up at her. She stopped the car in the middle of the road and stared back. She could see it all in his face. Horror. Despair. Guilt.

"I didn't mean to," he whispered, "It was an accident."

Not what she had wanted to hear. Not bothering to even pull of to the side, she put her car in park, reached over the middle console, and enveloped her brother in the tightest hug she could manage.

Danny was frozen. He was no psychologist, but he knew this was definitely not a proper response to a murder confession. Maybe she didn't understand.

"I was about to come home," he continued, unable to return the hug, "But there was something at the school. It was Spectra, and Bertrand was Mr. Baker. Or, he looked like Mr. Baker. I was fighting Spectra, and—well, Sam was there too—she got Bertrand. I came back inside and saw Mr. Baker…"

Jazz did understand. She did understand, and she could not release her brother.

"I threw him against the lockers with an ectoblast. God, Jazz, there was a dent….then the blood…."

"It's okay," his sister interrupted, "Anyone could have done it."

Danny actively pulled away from the hug now. "No, no one else could have done it! Only me, only I could have—"

"Vlad—"

"Never killed a man." They both added a mental, _As far as we know._ "I—I killed a man."

 _Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger now he's dead._

"But you didn't mean to," Jazz hissed, "Intent matters."

He didn't seem to think so. He looked down and closed his eyes again. His shoulders were stiff and narrowed inward. A different concern poked into her head; maybe he actually was sick. Because of a virus or bacteria, anyway. She didn't need a perfect score on the CAT to know that he felt physically ill.

Before Jazz could decide what to do or say, her cell phone rang. She sighed, reluctantly tearing her eyes away from her hurting brother, and checked the caller ID.

"Hi, Mom."

"Is everything okay, sweetie? Did you get Danny?"

"Yeah, we're on our way home." She put the car in drive again.

"We saw you drive past the house."

Jack butted in, "Were there ghosts, Jazzie? Do you need us to meet you with the Fenton Ghost Assault Vehicle?"

 _No, no we do not,_ she thought, _That would be the opposite of helpful right now._

"No, Dad, we—" She paused to come up with a plausible lie. "Danny thought he forgot something at Tucker's, but we found it."

Their mother sighed, and (guessing by the quiet) their father had lost interest as soon as ghosts were no longer involved. They were very busy, after all. "Just get home soon," Maddie urged her. Her mom was tired; Jazz wasn't sure if she'd slept last night.

"We will," she replied, "Bye, mom." Then they were off.

The Fenton parents had wanted Phantom's blood/ectoplasm before, but now, after an apparent murder in cold blood, they were even more single minded in their pursuit of him. If Jazz knew her brother at all, he wasn't going to get over this any time soon, if he ever did. Maybe it was time to…. These were unfortunate circumstances, of course, not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but this may be the time when they had to come clean to their parents.

Jazz cringed at the thought. Danny shuddered slightly at whatever was going through his head. It was all very awkward.

There would be consequences either way, Jazz concluded as she parked her car. But which would be less severe?

Her chest burned as she waited for her near-adult brother compose himself. He wiped his face with his sleeves and took a deep breath before looking over at Jazz with timid eyes as if to say, _Ready as I'll ever be._

With a simultaneous sigh the sibling threw open their car doors and stepped out. The words Fenton Works blared above them, gigantic and brightly lit even this early in the morning. While exhaustion was pretty normal for Danny, Jazz was usually more awake by now. She noted that she had been more awake; her energy simply been drained away since then.

There was an unspoken understanding between the two that they would try not to alert their parents, at least until Danny was in bed and could hopefully sleep, or maybe pseudo-sleep. Jazz considered the possibility of Danny just phasing to his room to avoid any possible parental interference, but with her parents on such high ghost alert figured that that would be too risky. The idea didn't seem to occur to Danny, but if it did he may have cast it off as quickly as she had.

They made it through the front door and up the stairs without difficulty. As Danny turned to trudge into his room, Jazz grabbed his hand and held it in hers.

"It's going to be okay, little brother."

…...

It had been a long night for Maddie and Jack. They had already exhausted themselves fixing tech after a major Technus attack, and they'd hoped to get some much needed sleep. Most of their weapons were finally working again, and the computers were almost functional.

Finally, it was time to check their work. Maddie stood in the middle of the room in her blue hazmat suit surveying the mess. "Is the radar system online?"

Jack set down the last bazooka and stepped over to the radar. Sure enough, it was blinking appropriately. No blips. "No ectoplasmic entities in the area," he replied.

Her eyes narrowed. That didn't necessarily mean it was working. "How about our home defense system?"

Jack turned around to look and declared, "The light's green!"

"Great," she sighed; it was the best they could do for now.

"Fudge time!" her husband announced, starting toward the stairs. He yawned and added, "Then sleep time."

She smiled fondly at him and noted that, despite the graying hair and larger jumpsuit, he was the same man she'd met in college and later married.

When they finally made it up into the kitchen and sealed off the lab, Maddie removed her mask and goggles. She took a deep breath and ran a hand through her hair. Her blue suit felt almost like a second skin to her, but after a long time on her head it began to feel constrictive. Glancing at the clock, she sighed. It was 11:24 pm, and she didn't remember hearing Danny come in; she'd have to go check on him.

That was when the phone rang.

The next morning sleep was but a pleasant dream. They ran out of fudge around four, meaning Jack had become much less pleasant. Still they had to persevere, and there was no time for baking. Both of them were shaken anyway, shaken and a little bit scared. A murder. In hindsight they supposed it was only a matter of time, but it was shocking nonetheless. And the ghost boy did it? They'd always known he couldn't be as good as he seemed, but this ran in direct violation of his apparent obsession.

Regardless of what led up to the death of the Casper High guidance counselor, the Fentons knew they had to be prepared to defend their town and capture the culprit.

Still, that kind of high-tech planning took energy, and Maddie was nearly out. A while after she was done making sure the kids were on their way home, she found Jack dozing over some schematics—undoubtedly having crashed from all of that sugar—and decided she needed some coffee. Again, she ascended to the kitchen.

Jazz was sitting at the table, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug. Her face was red as if she'd just now come in from the cold and she still donned her bright orange Fenton Hat.

"You have enough for another cup?"

Jazz gestured to the pot and Maddie nodded in thanks.

"You make it home okay?" she asked as she poured her coffee.

"Yes."

"Is Danny sleeping?"

"Yes."

Maddie sat down and assessed her daughter, though her long red hair concealed most of her face as she stared down at her coffee. "Are you okay, sweetie?"

"Yeah," she replied, not looking up but sensing that she needed to elaborate, "Just tired is all."

Maddie tilted her head in sympathy. Her daughter didn't want to admit that she was scared after last night, but fear was a perfectly normal emotion to experience after such an event.

"I know you always defended InvisoBill—"

"Phantom—"

"But it's different this time, Jazz. He committed murder. We have a witness."

"I'm sure there's an explanation."

"Like there is for everything else? The robberies, the kidnapping! He even assaulted your father and I, what was his excuse for that? If you have explanations, I'd love to hear them."

There was a moment of silence. Jazz's lips were tightened and her brow furrowed. One finger on her right hand was absently tapping her mug as she absolutely refused to look up.

Her scientist mother extended a still gloved hand over the table and reached for her adult daughter. Taking her fidgety hand in hers, she thought of what to say. She knew that Jazz was grown up, that she was thriving away from home, at college. She'd always been such a strong-willed, independent little thing, but Maddie had always been her mother. And mothers comfort. Mothers protect.

"There is no explanation," she asserted softly, "That ghost—Phantom, InvisoBill, it doesn't matter what you call it… David Baker is dead. What do you know about David Baker?"

Her daughter gulped, and Maddie's heart broke a little more. _This is a conversation we have to have,_ she assured herself, _If I don't make this clear, she might try something ridiculous, and she could get hurt._

"He was the guidance counselor at Casper High," Jazz answered, just as softly.

"That's right. Anything else?" She shook her head, so Madie continued, "He was twenty-seven years old. In college he met a girl named Kristina; they got married last spring in a beautiful ceremony full of flowers. They were trying to have a baby. You know how I know this? Kristina Ann Baker told me when she came to identify her dead husband's body. Do you still think there must be an explanation?"

The hand in Maddie's was sweaty. Her skin had gotten a little paler and her eyes had gotten a little wetter. Still, she nodded emphatically.

"Do you know where his parents were when this happened? On a winter vacation. Can you imagine that, Jazz? Sleeping in a hotel by the beach, dreaming of white sand and palm trees, when you get a call saying your only child is dead?"

Jazz shook her head this time. "That doesn't mean it was Phantom's fault," she insisted.

"Do you know how he died, Jazz? Do you know why he died?"

The young adult sucked in a sharp breath but neither moved nor spoke to answer.

"We found him on the floor, already dead. We think it was the head injury that did it, and you know how those can bleed. The janitor said Phantom just shot him into the lockers. Shot him into the lockers with so much force he _died._ There was a dent, Jazz, a dent made with his skull. All because he wanted to look at a student's file before Monday and wasn't sure where he'd put it."

"We don't know the whole story," Jazz asserted firmly. She did look at her mother now, and her aqua eyes fierce but red from crying.

"You're right, we don't. But we're going to find out. We're going to capture Phantom, and he will be held accountable for this."

That didn't seem to make her feel better. "Will you ever listen, though?" she pleaded, "If he has something to say, will you hear him out before you…before you…."

She wanted very much to appease her daughter; she hated seeing her so upset, even if it was for all the wrong reasons. Maybe she couldn't handle the fact that a man had been killed so she reassigned her feelings to a different cause, a familiar cause that somewhat negated the implied danger. If there was a reasonable explanation for why Phantom had done it, no one was in danger anymore. It didn't sound like Jazz, the ever logical scholar. She was the psychoanalyst in the family.

Maddie glanced at the clock; though it had been undefined, her coffee break was certainly over. The town needed her in the lab, monitoring ghostly activity and working out ways to destroy a killer before he could strike again.

So she smiled and squeezed her daughter's hand one last time. "Sure, in the name of truth and justice, we will listen."

 **Thank you to my reviewers, and extra thanks to my beta/proofreader WildfireWarrior34!**


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

There was no school Monday. People who had yet to hear about the death assumed it was a snow day. Danny knew better.

Around noon, after several hours of alternating between dozing and wallowing, Danny Fenton stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling, making up new constellations in a forced game of connect-the-dots. It wasn't a very good distraction.

His face and throat were heavy with mucous and his body temperature was erratic. Right now he felt too warm to be wrapped up but too vulnerable to be exposed, which meant that he was constantly fidgeting with the blankets.

His door creaked open, spilling some light into the room. He'd never turned on any lights and had very carefully closed the curtains. That in combination with the clouds which were presumably hovering outside left him in an uncomfortable gray area of darkness. His eyelids fell shut in response to the new stimuli. Jazz must've decided it was lunchtime, but his stomach was too upset for food.

A new weight on the mattress only served to annoy the teen.

"How are you feeling?"

"Mom?" he croaked, choking a little on the mess in his throat. _Man, I sound horrible._

The scientist put a hand on Danny's head. "Hmm, you don't feel feverish."

He took a deep, raspy breath; he ran cold.

"Is your throat sore?"

He nodded, eyes still closed. It was indeed sore, but it also gave him a reason not to say much.

"I brought you some soup."

Danny exhaled now. He'd have to respond somehow, to accept or decline the soup. His first instinct was to grunt noncommittally, but he stopped himself. The more sick he was, the more his parents would worry. And pay attention. So soup it was.

As soon as he tried turning over to face his mother, he became aware of how bulky his body was. When had he gotten so tall, so clunky? His skin felt hyper-sensitive, turning his sheets suddenly into sandpaper on exposed skin, and he regretted changing into shorts and a t-shirt that morning.

"Oh, honey," his mom cooed sympathetically as he struggled. _Do I really look as pathetic as I feel?_

After setting the soup bowl down on a nightstand, his tired mother gripped her son's shoulders and pulled him into a sitting position. It was only mildly terrifying. For two full seconds the boy was sure he'd been cast for real into a recurring nightmare.

A vision of a lab flashed across Danny's mind's eye and he tensed up. Was she holding him down?

Was she holding him down?

 _Was she holding him down?_

He remembered vividly how it felt being captured by Vlad. Latched to a table, at the mercy of a malicious mad scientist. This had happened to him before, but this time he deserved it. Maddie's shadow was easily imposed on the fruitloop's.

 _Mama mia, mama mia, let me go._

Shuddering, he stomped that image down. She was just helping him sit. That was all.

"Can you eat?" She was holding the soup again. Chicken noodle, it smelled like. Classic. But his stomach….

Danny shook his head weakly, enjoying the semi-darkness his eyelids provided. Did he have a headache now too?

"Look at me, Danny." _Do I have to?_

He cracked his eyes open sadly and blinked until his mom's face came into focus. Her lips were pursed, but her violet eyes were wide with concern. It was the details in her appearance that alarmed Danny. Her pale face had yellower undertones which became purple under her eyes. Her hair was flat and tangled, even a little frizzy, and her blue hazmat suit was inexplicably wrinkled.

 _Of course she hasn't slept,_ he thought.

"You know you're safe, right?" she reminded him tenderly, brushing some stray hair out of his face.

He closed his eyes again. He didn't know about that. He wasn't safe—not safe from harm, not safe for others to be around. Not safe at all.

There was a bang from downstairs, a sound that had ceased to surprise the Fenton children long ago. Yet it jarred Danny a little more than usual this time; must've been the headache.

"Maddie!" Jack shouted from below, "I think it works!"

She looked up at the door then back to her son. "Try it, okay?" she asked, handing him the bowl. He got a good grip on it and nodded slowly, but by the time he looked up she was gone.

Lifting up the spoon for the first time, Danny tried to shove away thoughts of what invention might have his dad so excited. Couldn't be good for him.

The soup was warm, and the warmth was pleasant. He hadn't realized how hungry he'd been, and a wave of gratitude washed over him. The first sip of noodles went down easily, but it did little to soothe his throat. He broke into another coughing fit and focused on keeping the soup bowl steady. Some chicken broth fell onto his blankets, but he couldn't find it within himself to care.

' _Is this some sort of spectral punishment?'_ he wondered grudgingly. It entered his head as a joke but left a bad taste in his mouth. Pushing those thoughts away too, he swallowed another spoonful of noodles.

His mom had left the door open, and he didn't have the energy to get up and shut it. He didn't have much energy at all, in fact. As a trial measure, he put the bowl in his lap and raised his right hand. He'd been getting better lately at using his ghost powers in human form. First he turned it invisible, then intangible. The next obvious step in the check was to summon a bit of ecto-energy, but as soon as a hint of green flashed in his palm he stopped. Suddenly the muscles in his arms were frozen and his breathing halted.

This only hurt his throat more of course. More coughing was on the way and he slumped backward in his bed. He couldn't think about that

The roiling in his stomach was back again. And that was too bad; the soup had been delicious.

….

 _Damn thermos,_ Sam thought, scowling as she stared at the containment device, _Stupid Spectra. Stupid Bertrand._

She was back home now. Her driver had showed up to get her from Tucker's shortly after Danny left. That's what Tucker said anyway; she'd missed him.

 _Stupid parents, stupid rules._ Danny needed her, she knew that, but she wasn't allowed out of the house. Her father had been on the phone with supposedly important government officials all morning, complaining and yelling at anyone unfortunate enough to pick up. Her mother, on the other hand, had been trying to contact the school. When those efforts gave her only voice-mails and "no comment" comments, she moved onto prospective tutors and private schools.

So yeah, she wasn't going to be allowed to leave. Which meant that a) she couldn't see Danny and b) she couldn't do anything with Spectra and Bertrand.

Suddenly rock music was blaring from her nightstand; her cell phone.

"Hello?" she answered quickly, not bothering to check the Caller ID in her haste.

"Sam?"

She smiled in recognition, but there was a twinge of disappointment in her chest. "Tucker?"

"Yep, it's me," he replied, "Have you gotten ahold of Danny at all today?"

And her smile left. Leaning back on the bed, she sighed, "No. He hasn't been answering my calls, and my parents won't let me out of the house to see him—or do anything for that matter."

"Maybe he's still in bed," Tuck suggested, "You know how he sleeps."

 _Like the dead._

The unspoken joke fell flat. Everything felt flat today, flat and sad and messy.

"Yeah," she acquiesced, "Maybe."

There was a moment of silence between the friends. Sam was staring at the thermos again. She could just push the release button and rip that lid of right now; Danny often said that kicking ghost butt helped with anger management. This wasn't even _misplaced_ aggression. It was directed exactly where it should be.

"So," Tucker began again, "I think I might have a plan."

She sat up again. _Spark._

"Samantha!" came her mother's voice from downstairs, "Samantha?"

"Just a minute, Mom," Sam groaned loudly before returning to her phone conversation. "Okay, what is it?"

"Alright, so we go to the lab—"

"Samantha," her father called in a warning tone, "Listen to your mother."

"Is there someone up there with you?" her mother accused.

 _Ugh._ "No, I'm just on the phone with Tucker—"

Who was still talking. She only heard a few words here and there. "The Fentons….Ghost Zone….fix it…"

"Tell the nice boy you can call him back please," her mother commanded, voice strained.

"Samantha Ann Manson." Now her dad was mad. Crap. Not that it was unexpected, but crap anyway.

"Tucker, I'm going to have to call you back."

"But the longer we wait…"

"The more likely my parents are to kill me."

 _Also not funny._

She could hear someone coming up the stairs now. She had to hang up, she had to hide the thermos. "Sorry!"

…..

Tucker stared dolefully at his phone. _No help then, alright._

Well, maybe not _no_ help. There was still one viable number he hadn't tried, and that wasn't because he was saving the best for last. If Sam was on lockdown and Danny was unresponsive, there was only one person left he could contact.

"Tucker?"

 _Why is everyone always so surprised?_

"Hi, Jazz."

"Danny's asleep—" she stuttered.

"Is he though?" Unintended acid dripped into his tone. Then he shook his head; Jazz had done nothing wrong.

There was a pause. "Probably not."

"Are your parents in the lab?"

"They haven't left."

He'd expected that. They could talk incessantly about ghosts and their obsessions, somehow without ever noticing how much they had in common with the ecto-entities. "Do you think you could get them out for a while?"

"Well," she replied, "That press conference is starting soon; I'm pretty sure they're going to that. Vlad's probably going to have a lot to say."

"It starts in half an hour, right?"

"Supposedly."

"So they should be leaving soon?"

"Yeah?"

Tucker grabbed his bag and headed for his bedroom door. "I'll see you soon."

He climbed down the stairs and found his parents watching television. "Are you going to watch the press conference with us?" his mom asked.

 _Play it cool,_ Tuck reminded himself, _You're not up to anything._

"Uh, no thanks. I think I'm gonna go to Danny's actually."

"Isn't he sick?" his dad responded.

"Yeah, but he needs the company, and I've already been exposed."

They still didn't seem very convinced. _Maybe I should've snuck out after all._ But he just couldn't bear to do that to his parents right now. What if they tried to find him and assumed the worst? _Well, one of us has to have a good relationship with our parents._

"Are you sure it's safe to go out right now, Tuck?"

"Mom, I'm a senior in high school, and I've been going to Danny's house since elementary school. Of course I'll be fine."

"Mr. Baker was a grown man, and that didn't seem to matter."

 _Don't worry, I know the ghost boy personally. Actually, we're kinda best buds and we fight ghosts together basically all the time. So it's cool, really._

Nope, that explanation probably wasn't going to do.

Tucker reached into his bag and pulled out a small ectogun and twirled it around on his pointer finger. "Don't worry, I'm armed and dangerous."

"Where did you get that?" his dad asked, with a note of indignation but not a hint of surprise. His mother merely sighed.

"The Fentons. Guy's gotta defend himself, right? It's only dangerous to ghosts anyway." Unfortunately, he'd forgotten to turn on the safety, and this too was an older model of ectogun. It didn't take well to the motion, and a stray shot shattered a glass on an end table, spraying water everywhere and not reassuring his parents in the slightest.

Before either parent could speak, the teenage boy spouted, "Wellseeyalaterbye," and slipped out the door.

By the time Tucker made it to Danny's house, his parents were already gone. He met Jazz in the lab, where she was staring at the closed portal.

"You ready?" he asked, making Jazz jump.

"Oh, didn't see you there," she apologized. She shook her head as if coming out of a daze. "Ready for what?"

Tucker slapped a hand on the nearby Specter Speeder. "We take this techno marvel out, we go see Clockwork, and we fix this mess."

Jazz raised her eyebrows. "You really think that'll work."

"Yup. One hundred percent, totally do."

Not leaving any room for silly skepticism, Tucker hopped into the driver's seat of the vehicle. "Alright," he said, realizing it had been a while, "Now how does this thing work again?"

Jazz slipped into the passenger's seat. "Mom and Dad installed a genetic lock on this too, so…" She stuck her finger on a pad on the dash, and the machine whirred to life. "And a genetic lock for the portal is in here now too." She stuck her finger on another pad, and the swirling green realm was revealed.

Their ride through the Ghost Zone was quiet. The pair had never really been close friends or anything, but they both cared deeply about Danny Fenton. So of course they would do whatever they could to help him.

The only ghosts they saw on the way to Clockwork's were vague, largely formless things. Even those whooshed away when the Specter Speeder zipped by.

While Tuck steered, Jazz navigated with a map and a scanner, which luckily her parents had repaired before they were distracted. The map, though, wasn't as reliable.

"It looks like a cliff of some sort," Jazz remarked, pointing to a squiggly line on the hand drawn sketch of what Danny and crew knew about the Ghost Zone.

"Probably a giant snake," Tuck sighed, "I think I remember seeing one of those around here."

Turns out it was, after all, just a squiggly line. A stray pencil mark or something, a common mistake on these things. Still, going around the imaginary obstacle added several minutes to their journey, and ultimately several minutes onto Danny's suffering.

Clockwork's tower was large and formidable, surrounded in the dark green by large, glowing cogs. The two parked their vehicle by the door and got out.

"Do we….do we knock?" Jazz asked Tucker as they stared at the grand double doors.

"I guess," he replied, "Don't see any ghostly doorbells."

"Do you think he knows we're here?"

"Probably."

"Do you think-"

The teens leapt backward as the doors swung open, revealing the hooded time master. His child-like visage was bored, Tucker thought, though Jazz detected a faint sadness there. For several seconds, no one spoke. Finally, Clockwork started the conversation.

"I know why you're here."

 _Moment of truth,_ they both thought. Tuck gulped, Jazz froze. If Clockwork couldn't help, Danny was very truly toast.

It was Tucker who put on a brave face and stared down at the figure, determination evident in all of his features. "Can you help us?"

"Omniscience does not yield omnipotence, young one," Clockwork exhaled as he changed into a man, now towering over the two.

"But you could help us," Tuck insisted, "You've done it before."

"Yes," he allowed, switching his staff between his hands, "I have."

"So you'll help us now," Jazz conjectured hopefully, voice shaky. She'd never liked the Ghost Zone. Its mysterious and malicious inhabitants, in combination with its ghastly apparent infinity, disturbed her.

"I will not interfere with these events."

The words fell like iron blocks on their toes.

"What do you mean you won't interfere?" Tucker snapped, "You helped us defeat Dan, you helped us with the ecto-acne incident. But you won't interfere to save a man's life?"

"To help young Daniel, you mean," Clockwork pointed out, transforming into his older form, "It's not as if either of you cares much for the late David Baker as an individual."

"You care about our motivation?" Tuck nearly shouted, "You won't help us because you think we're here for the wrong reason?"

"No," the ghost clarified, "I will not interfere with the time-line because tampering with it is not necessary at the moment."

"So, everything's going to be okay?" Jazz asked quietly.

"I didn't say that, now, did I?"

Tucker switched tactics. "Come on, you've done ten years in the future, twenty years in the past! This wasn't even twenty-four hours ago. Not a big deal at all, just a little blip, a little oops," he persuaded, gesturing here and there for emphasis, "Nothing a super powerful ghost like you can't handle, huh? So what do you say?"

"I will not interfere with these events."

"Please." Tucker's voice broke. "Pretty please, with PDAs on top?"

While Tucker begged, Jazz was thinking. Clockwork had a soft spot for Danny. She'd noted it before, and she could see it in him now. Not that that guaranteed eternal fealty. As an all seeing entity, he had a lot of things to look out for at once. Not to mention whatever hold the Observants had on him. If they were telling him not to, he'd have to be tricky about helping them. If he'd decided not to pull out a magic wand and whisk their problems away, she saw little hope of changing his mind.

"Can you give us any advice?" she requested, desperation coloring her demeanor, "Your opinion, a hint, something?"

Clockwork paused. When he spoke again, he spoke very carefully. "I think you should get home now. You all have a lot to do."

…

"You can't make me go, you can't make me go, I swear you can't make me go!" Sam yelled at her parents.

"Young lady, you do not have a say in—"

"I'm almost eighteen, you know that, right? I can do whatever I want at eighteen, I can move out at eighteen."

"Sweetie," her mom pleaded, sniffing a little. This conversation was taking its toll on her. "We don't have to be that drastic right now. We just want to keep you safe."

"Your idea of keeping me safe is taking me away from everything and everyone I've ever cared about!"

"Don't you care about us, Samantha? Don't you care about your mother and I? Where's your respect for _our_ feelings?"

Sam wanted to calm down. She didn't relish in her parents' misery, their disappointment. But she couldn't let them control her, couldn't let them drag her around like some pretty, expensive toy doll.

"We've put up with a lot in Amity over the past few years," her dad continued, "Ever since your freshman year, it's been attack after attack, always accelerating in frequency and intensity. This is just too much. It's the last straw, and we have to do something."

Everything she did was always too much for them. Too much black, too much rule-breaking, too much interest in the occult. Too many unsuitable friends, too many snide remarks. And she couldn't handle their judgment right now.

"You two are always like this!" There was a hot bubble of anger in her chest. She felt like a frothing monster, a giant lizard roaring and knocking down buildings. "I ha—"

She stopped herself mid-sentence. She couldn't say that. Not now. She didn't hate her parents; she hated the way they treated her sometimes, but that wasn't what she was mad about. As quickly as it had come when her mother mentioned switching schools, her anger deflated, and she sunk into a nearby chair. Tears stung at her eyes and she took a sharp breath. _God, I can't cry. I hate crying._

"I'm sorry," she finally sputtered, "I can't talk like this." And without any further explanation, she fled up the stairs back into her room, shut the door, and flung herself onto her bed. There was no pursuit.

After a minute or so of pained gasps and internal ' _pull yourself together'_ s, she wiped her face off and sat up. _Ew, mascara_ _hands_ _._

That was when she noticed something off. Her closet door was open. She'd closed it, that's where she'd hidden the thermos right before going down to see her parents. Had her mother sent someone to prune the black from her wardrobe again? An all too familiar feeling of suspicion came over her as she crept up to investigate.

Shakily, she crouched down to examine her special loose floorboard.

 _The thermos… It's gone!_

 **Thank you very much to my readers, my reviewers, and my proofreader WildfireWarrior34! I hope you enjoyed the chapter.**


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

It was a depressing ride home for Jazz and Tucker. Clockwork had said they had work to do, but there was no to-do list. What could they do?

"We need to talk to him," Jazz sighed once they neared the portal home.

"Talk to who?" Tucker barbed bitterly, "Bigfoot? Elvis?"

Exasperation flared inside of Jazz. "Talk to Danny," she clarified, "We need to talk to Danny."

Not a conversation he was looking forward to. "Don't know what we'd tell him. 'Hey, sorry, but we talked to the master of all time, and it's hopeless?"

"It's not hopeless," she insisted, "We just need to make a plan."

"One plan to save us all. Any ideas?"

"Well, it would be a nice start if we could get him out of bed," she began.

"Has he really been there all day?"

"He's hardly moved, as far as I can tell," she relayed calmly, hiding her strain under a layer of exhaustion, "And I think he might actually be sick."

"Danny hasn't been sick since the accident."

"Say what you want, but I think he _can_ hardly move. I peeked in on him a few times, but he never acknowledged me. When Mom went to give him lunch she actually had to physically help him sit up."

Alright, that really didn't sound like Danny. Like any self-respecting teenage boy (and almost adult, too), he was reluctant to accept any assistance from his mother.

"At first I thought he was just tired or understandably depressed," Jazz continued, eyes far away, "But the more I think about it, it seems more...sinister, I guess. I don't know, I'm probably just all worked up and over-thinking it..."

Tucker sighed, reeling in another sarcastic comment. "We're all worked up. But we'll figure it out. Always have, always will."

They landed the Specter Speeder in the lab with no issues. They'd gambled a lot on the press conference taking a while, and thankfully it paid off. Well, not exactly; they were still no closer to fixing this whole mess than they were before. But it didn't backfire and they didn't get caught. That was something.

Without saying another word, they ended up outside of Danny's bedroom door. They cringed at the sound of his wheezing breaths, and Jazz wondered if she should go get the thermometer.

Tucker pushed the door open slowly and stepped inside. He found his friend slumped awkwardly in a half-sitting position, a half-eaten (or half-spilled) bowl of soup resting on his lap. His pale skin shined with a thin layer of sweat and his mouth was open in a haggard grimace.

"Hey, dude," Tuck whispered, as if the act of speaking would put a dent in his friend.

"Hey," the ghost boy rasped.

Tucker sat on the side of the bed and took the soup bowl away. "How you feeling?"

"Better."

Jazz was still standing in the doorway. Her goal in life was to someday treat psychological disorders for a living, but, as time stood, her bedside manner was rather lacking.

"Can you sit up?"

Danny grunted and tried. "I think so."

When the halfa managed to pull himself into a sitting position, Tuck smiled. If Jazz had been right about his condition earlier, he was getting a little better. "You need anything? Comic books, snack food, needlepoint?"

The grimace formed itself into a brief but genuine smile. "Got any sleeping pills?"

Tucker's lips narrowed and eyebrows synched together in concern. "You been having trouble sleeping?"

Danny didn't seem to deem the question fit for an answer. Instead he just lolled his head backward and let out a shaky sigh. Jazz chose that moment to exit and find some medicine for the pain. While she didn't know what kind of dose would be necessary, underdosing couldn't be any more harmful than letting him suffer, right?

"Did you lose your phone?" Tucker asked nicely, avoiding any intonation of accusation.

His friend paused then shook his head reluctantly. A nod to the right showed Tucker that it had fallen off the nightstand. Fallen, been pushed, whatever. While he bent over to pick it up, Danny coughed.

"I guess you're the hacker now, eh?" Tuck joked. _Laughter is the best medicine._

Danny didn't laugh.

Jazz came back with a couple of pills and a glass of water. She passed them into her brother's clumsy hands and tried hard to smile. He put them all in his mouth and swigged without question.

"You didn't just poison me, did you?" he asked, lowering the cup from his lips.

"Hope not," she responded with a small laugh, "Just Ibuprofen."

Tucker didn't wait for a lull in the exchange before starting with the important stuff. "We need to talk about tomorrow."

Danny shut his eyes and let out a small groan at the thought.

"We need to come up with a strategy," he continued.

"Where's Sam?" Danny demanded weakly.

Tucker sighed. "On lock-down at her house. You can imagine how her parents have been reacting to all of this."

Pang. _Yeah, that doesn't sound accusatory at all, Tuck,_ he thought to himself.

"Yeah," his friend agreed cheerlessly, "I bet."

"I think you should go to school tomorrow," Jazz interjected, trying to keep the focus on strategy, "Unless you're super sick, I mean."

"I agree. It would be weird if you weren't there."

As if to counter the suggestion, he broke out into another coughing fit. Jazz hated having to stand there and watch him fight a battle with his own respiratory system.

"You think anyone would notice?" he asked between hacks. _There's a lot they haven't._

"They might. You never know who's going to be paying extra close attention."

Jazz was suddenly reminded of what an outsider she was. Danny and Tucker (along with Sam of course) had been defending the secret and Amity Park for years now. Little freshmen in high school took on all that responsibility, and look what they had to show for their efforts. Crisis after crisis after crisis. She only butted in occasionally, to help with this and that. There was a reason she had never been very involved; she wasn't very competent.

They'd continued conversing while she'd been thinking.

"If we just act natural, everything will be fine," Tucker said in what sounded like an attempted conclusion.

Danny wasn't having that. "It's not going to work like that, Tuck. They know I did it, they know it was me. I might pull it off as Fenton, but what about as Phantom? As Phantom I—" He was cut off by another round of coughs; apparently his lungs couldn't adequately store enough breath for four whole sentences without trying to get rid of some mucous. "Ugh, and why am I so sick? I'm never sick."

Maybe she could explain that. "Hmm. Have you noticed that, ever since the accident, your more potent psychological impulses have become more intertwined with your physiology?"

The boys stared at her blankly.

"English, please," her brother requested.

Despite his impatience, Jazz had brightened. "Your emotions affect your body more than a normal human's would. You're feeling a lot of very intense negative emotions right now, right?"

"Right."

"So wouldn't it make sense for that to affect you physically? For that to make you sick?"

He looked taken aback, unsure of how to respond. "Well that's a cruel joke. Guess I can give up on graduation." His eyelids scrunched together and he took a quick, scratchy breath. _Like that was ever gonna happen anyway._

Jazz's chest ached. "You don't think you'll ever feel better?" _Stupid question._

"We need to get you doing something," Tucker suggested, "Something that'll distract you, that'll make you feel better."

"What, like going on patrol? Gotta keep the ghosts away, right?" he laughed softly, "Oh wait, I'm Amity's Most Wanted again, aren't I?"

"Never stopped you before," Jazz whispered, unsure of what to say.

"Before I was a nuisance. Now...now I'm murderer. A cold blooded killer and everyone knows it."

"Dude, you know that it wasn't your—"

"If you say it wasn't my fault, Tuck, I swear to God—"

Suddenly Jazz made a decision. This tip-toeing method was utterly ineffective, and they _needed_ to get some things done. "Daniel James Fenton, this was not your fault. This was an incredibly unfortunate but unavoidable mistake. Yes, a mistake. I want you to repeat that over and over again, out loud, in your head, however many times it takes until you understand that. Our mistakes do not define us, our decisions do."

"I decided to—"

"You decided to what? Check out a disturbance at the school? Do your job and defend this town like the awesome, self-sacrificing hero that you are? What I need you to do, what we need you to do, what this whole town needs you to do, is to decide right here, right now, that you will persist. You're a good person, Danny. A great person. Can you promise to try?"

 _This has to work,_ she prayed internally, _Hit or miss._

Mid-speech she'd sat down on the bed next to Tucker and taken her brother's hands. They were shaky and sweaty (maybe snotty), but she didn't care. She gripped them confidently and stared compassionately at his conflicted face. After a few long seconds, he nodded.

A small smile appeared on her face. "So about tomorrow…"

….

Vlad Masters stood in front of an ornate mirror and readjusted his tie. His designer suit was perfectly arranged. His shoes were impeccably shined. Not a hair was out of place, and it was time to meet the press. Yet the billionaire mayor's sharp blue eyes remained on his reflection.

He'd done a lot of public speaking in his life. School presentations, board meetings, even previous press conferences. Whether in the classroom or on live television, oration had at some point just stopped being a big deal. No, it wasn't the crowd that bothered him. It wasn't a fear of forgetting one's trousers or how to speak. It was the content of the speech itself.

He and Maddie had just sat down for some light reading when the call came. And he'd had no peace since.

What exactly happened wasn't clear. And one of Vlad's people (who had since been fired of course) had scheduled a press conference before he had a chance to visit Daniel. Someone always wanted him to see something, hear something, do something. Some idiot or another always seemed to be loitering about, and he never had time to slip away for more than a few moments at a time. Now his constituents were waiting outside. Waiting for answers he didn't yet have.

Even two minutes after the scheduled speaking time, the mayor couldn't make a concrete decision about which route to take. He could condemn the Ghost Boy. Get Phantom out of the way and Fenton at his mercy. He could pick a scapegoat, or scapeghost as the case may be. As an admittedly power hungry man, enemies came by the basketful. He could be ambiguous, withhold judgment and leave other avenues open for the future, when he could further develop his schemes.

This line of thought irritated Vlad. _If I'm just thinking about all the things I could do, why not consider stand-up comedy? Animal sacrifice? Karaoke?_

Maddie had convinced him to try karaoke once.

He imagined telling her that night that her son would one day be accused of such a heinous crime. That she would cry out for his blood, as he was sure she was doing now. This would all be due to Jack's influence, of course; the bumbling idiot had a tendency for ruining lives one stupid stumble after another.

He imagined telling her now that her son had been accused of murder. _No, that certainly won't do,_ he snapped internally, _That's even worse than the animal sacrifice at the press conference idea._ If anything, the current situation made it only more important that he and the boy keep their secret identities just as they were: secret. Maddie and Jack would undoubtedly point their blame (and their ectoguns) in the direction of ecto-contamination. It would reinforce their belief in the infallibly evil nature of ghosts and destroy what thin affinity his beloved Maddie still had for him. Jack would want to cure his son, and would probably kill the boy with his moronic methods.

 _So ambiguity it is._

As he sighed and turned away from the mirror, an intern peeked in. "Sir," the young man uttered shakily, "They're, um, waiting. I mean, everybody is ready, sir. Whenever you're ready, sir."

 _Ah, I love that._ Seeing the terror he inflicted on the face of a lesser man almost always made Vlad's day.

"Tell them I'll be out momentarily, Steve."

"My name's not—" Nick began out of habit. He stopped himself as soon as he'd realized his blunder. Correction definitely was not worth the trouble in this instance. He merely bowed out of the room with a humble, "Yes, sir."

As soon as Vlad stepped out of City Hall, he was immediately assaulted by a barrage of flashing lights and shouting.

"Mr. Mayor—"

"Exiting City Hall now is Amity Park's acclaimed—"

"Mayor Masters, what do you plan to do about—"

When he got to the ornate podium, he cleared his throat and all went quiet. No one wanted to miss a word of his address. A quick scan of the crowd and a calming breath were all it took for Vlad to readjust his face into a diplomatic mask of the appropriate concern coupled with his trademark reassuring confidence.

"Citizens of Amity Park," the mayor began, "I speak to you on what certainly is a very solemn day. This previous night, our community lost a stellar public servant and, I've been told, a gem of a husband, son, and friend. This was a man named David Baker. A moment of silence for him, please."

Another crowd scan. A few people had closed their eyes or bowed their heads, but most of them were still staring expectantly up at the figure on stage. _Alright, the mourning angle is dead._

"The circumstances surrounding this tragedy are still unclear."

This got a reaction from the crowd. Cries of anger and shouted questions resounded through the open area in an unpleasant clamor. For exactly half a second, Vlad Masters reconsidered his tactics. Then he quickly reconsidered reconsidering.

No matter what, he refused to confront or shout down the crowd. So, like a stern schoolteacher or a tired parent, he simply waited for the noise to slow then stop. Hungry reporters and anxious townsfolk alike eventually realized what was happening and hushed with embarrassed indignation.

"The investigation is still ongoing, and I can assure you that we at City Hall have some of the world's greatest ghost experts working on the case—including the esteemed Maddie Fenton." He paused for a moment and the people in the crowd exchanged brief, confused glances before mustering up a faint clap. Vlad waited a while before waving them down as if there were roaring applause. "As this is a first in our community, my administration is taking a cautious and prudent approach to the acquisition of the truth and the eventual pursuit of justice." He could hear his approval rating plummet and cursed the Fenton boy for getting into this mess. "I will take a few questions."

Hands shot up, in the press section and otherwise, and the shouting resumed. Vlad could feel the origins of a headache in his skull, and his chest was heavy with the weight of his irritation. Making a point about how he wished the rest of the proceedings to go, he pointed to a quiet, unassuming reporter a few rows from the front.

The balding man adjusted his glasses and hurriedly flipped a page in his notes. _Unprepared oaf._ Vlad resisted the urge to tap his foot.

"Uh, Mister Mayor," he stuttered, "How do you intend to ensure the safety of Amity Park?"

Vlad grinned. _Perfect._ "The safety of the citizens of Amity Park has always been enormously important to me. Nothing is of more imminent importance to my administration than the safety and happiness of my citizens. That is why I have always done anything and everything possible to ensure the ghostly menaces which threaten this town are kept at bay. As I have stated previously, Amity Park is home to some of the best ghost experts in the world." He paused momentarily to signal the end of his answer. "Next question."

More hands went up, quietly this time. Vlad spotted a younger woman with unkempt hair near the back of the press area. He very carefully pointed her way, and she looked from side to side as if to ask her neighbors if she'd really been chosen to speak. The slouching journalist cleared her throat and asked, "What do you say to allegations that the Ghost Boy committed this crime?"

 _Of course everyone knows,_ he thought with an undetectable sigh, _Wasn't ever really a secret._ "The investigation is still ongoing and I can offer no comment on that at this time."

Their mayor glanced down at his watch. His hands were resting intertwined on the podium, so a subtle wrist rotation eliminated even the need for him to shift his "calmly" smiling face downward.

 _I did say questions,_ he thought to himself, _And that was two, technically plural, questions._ But he had made no improvement on the mood of the crowd. _One more for good measure couldn't hurt._ He wanted the press conference to feel comprehensive even though he was offering no real information, but he also didn't want to draw attention to the fact that he was indeed saying basically nothing.

"You, there. Concerned citizen in yellow."

A woman near the front of the citizens' section dropped her hand and took a breath. Vlad had judged her in a second. Barely done hair, little if any makeup. Dull clothes and a small assembly of children at her feet. He would look compassionate for listening to the concerns of a frazzled mother and gain brownie points in the community. She was even holding a baby. Maybe she'd bring it up to the stage and he could kiss the slimy rat. The camera's would love it.

And she would surely ask some emotional question. Probably some reiteration of the, "Are we safe?" plea, which he had already addressed but would happily elaborate on with more flowery language.

The more he told them they were safe, the more they were bound to believe it.

The woman wasted no time in handing the infant to a nearby man and pulling out a rumpled note card. Vlad experienced a moment of uncertainty before she began.

"Mr. Mayor. Amity has been suffering from ghost attacks for years. I've spent this entire time worrying for the safety of myself, my friends, my husband, my children. When you ran for office, you promised that you would help. You'd make it better, you'd make it safer. We put our trust in you, and nothing is better. Since you've taken office, we've been enslaved by dream ghosts, plant ghosts. Terrorized by that weather ghost. There was even a day when all of the men disappeared, Mister Masters. Need I go on?"

The rhetorical question hung in the air as she paused. "All during your administration. So I ask: do you accept any responsibility for what happened last night?"

 _Damn Daniel._

The crowd growled. The crowd rumbled. The crowd roared.

"My administration's first priority is the safety of Amity's citizens. We are working to figure out what happened,"—no one was listening—"And protect all of you from the dangers…."

"That's not enough!"

"What do you say to—"

"My hydrangea bushes—"

"What happened to law and order? What happened to—"

Just when Vlad didn't think things could get any worse, he heard an all too familiar voice getting ominously closer.

"Hang on, V-Man! We're comin'!"

That giant orange blob was plowing his way through the crowd like a freight train. A stupid, careless freight train. In one hand was the hand of his beloved Maddie, and his other arm was supporting what appeared to be a new Fenton Bazooka.

Jack climbed on stage, foregoing the stairs in exchange for an awkward pull-up style entrance. Huffing and puffing like the wolf Vlad imagined him to be, he reached a beefy arm around his shoulders and squeezed. Vlad guessed he'd also forgone a shower.

"Don't worry, I've got this," the oaf panted in his ear, as softly as was in his nature.

Immediately after releasing his old college "pal," he tapped the microphone, creating an auditory disturbance that successfully garnered the attention—and further ire—of the almost-rioters.

"Is this thing on?"

 _Hm, I wonder if Daniel would kill_ me _if I asked._

"Hi everyone. It's me, Jack Fenton. I know you're all very upset right now, but it's not Vladdie here you should be mad at."

By know Maddie had found the stairs and seen fit to take whatever weapon Jack had been waving around. This, unfortunately, allowed him to resume his smelly, one-armed hug/crush-Vlad stance.

"V-Man here is a great man, a wonderful mayor, and a grade-A friend. And he has our full support! Isn't that right, Mads?"

Poor Maddie looked exhausted. She sighed, obviously humiliated by her current husband's antics. "Of course, hon."

"What we have here is our newest invention. And it's going to help us catch and destroy the ghosty that killed Mr. Baker. Behold the Fenton...the Fenton…" He paused, rubbing his chin thoughtfully with his sausage link-fingers.

"The weapon which has yet to be named," Maddie assisted.

"Ah, yes! The Fenton Weapon Which Has Yet to Be Named. Anyway, this beauty stalls the core of a ghost, stops it dead in its tracks." He took a break in his explanation to laugh at his own joke, a joke Amity Park had tired of years ago. A joke Vlad had tired of twenty long years ago.

Maddie continued for him. "One blast should render a ghost incapable of doing more than maintaining its form. It is as of yet untested, and it is likely the charge will need to be adjusted based on the power level of the ghost."

"We're setting it to high, so that the next time we see Invisobill—" Jack began.

"Who may or may not be guilty—" Vlad interjected, wanting to quickly separate himself from judgment.

"—we'll be ready."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"You sure you don't want me to stay over?" Tucker asked, already bundling up for the walk home.

"I'll be fine," Danny replied, "Your parents are going to think we've kidnapped you."

"They wouldn't mind. What place could be safer than a ghost hunter's house?"

"A lot of places, in my experience," he retorted. _After all,_ he thought without emotion, _I did die here._

The boys stood in silence by the front door, while Jazz hovered a few feet away. She'd refused to leave them alone, even after their parents got home from the press conference and returned to the lab.

"I could drive you home," she reminded Tuck reluctantly.

"Nah. I'm walking in a winter wonderland," he declined cheerfully. Danny didn't buy the enthusiasm. His friend was still miffed with winter after the incident with the snow bank. Danny knew that Tucker knew that Jazz wanted to stay with him. "I'll swing by before school tomorrow. We can walk together."

"Maybe I can drive you?" Jazz suggested hopefully.

Her little brother and his friend exchanged doleful looks. It wasn't cool, but it wasn't as if they had far on the social ladder to fall. And it wouldn't make anyone saner, having Jazz around spewing psychobabble 24/7. But she was trying to be helpful, and it was cold out.

"Sure," Tuck relented, sensing Danny might feel compelled to reject her, "Sounds good."

"Alright."

More silence.

"So, uh, bye." And Tucker left. The door opened, revealing swirls of snowflakes in the dark of night. The door closed, leaving the two siblings alone.

With a sigh, Danny turned and began to ascend the stairs.

"You're not going to bed, are you?" she asked, alarmed.

"So what if I am?" he replied, neither stopping nor slowing.

"It's still early."

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "You think ten o'clock is early?" She didn't want him crawling back into bed to wallow. She probably had some fancy diagnosis for him all prepped inside her head, but he wasn't interested in hearing it. He wanted to be alone, and she couldn't stop him.

"Early for you." When he didn't offer her a reply, she jogged up the stairwell to meet him and grabbed his arm. "Danny…" she implored.

"Danny, what?" he snapped.

She recoiled but did not loosen her grip. "Danny, I want to help you. And I don't think you should be alone right now."

"What are you worried about? What do you think I'm gonna do?"

She bristled, and he knew while he was speaking that he wasn't being fair to her. His sister had done nothing wrong, but she didn't understand. He knew she loved him and accepted him unconditionally, but ever since she'd discovered his secret he'd worried about losing her trust. Worried that one day she'd look at him and see the kind of mental patient that needed to be locked up. After Dan and all.

"I'm worried you're going to beat yourself up over this," she said softly, "And that's not what you need right now. You need to stay busy."

She stared at him and he stared at her. They heard a clink from the basement and Danny closed his eyes. "I need to be alone right now, but I'll work on my homework. Is that okay?"

They'd spent the afternoon on homework. But when you're a busy, half-ghost superhero, the stuff accumulates.

Thankfully, she nodded and released him. "If you need help…"

"I'll get you." He tried to smile, and it half worked. "Good night."

"Good night," Jazz whispered, watching him jog up the stairs, away from her.

Danny was relieved to shut the door behind him when he reached his room. It was dark, and he didn't bother turning on a light. He merely felt his way to his desk and plunked himself down in his chair. Before turning on the desk lamp, he took stock of his body. His stomach felt offset, and his head maintained a constant background buzz. His muscles ached and his airways had yet to clear completely.

 _Better already,_ he thought bitterly. Jazz's emotionally induced illness theory still sounded a little far-fetched to him, and his emotions had controlled _the weather_ before. Maybe it was because he'd felt pretty sucky before and none of this ever happened to him. Maybe it was because he was already feeling better physically, and he didn't like what that would say about him emotionally.

"Ungh," he groaned, holding his head in his hands. Maybe he could just stay in the dark forever and forget everything he'd ever done.

But then he heard shuffling feet outside. Jazz was waiting, listening for books probably. And if she didn't see light through the crack under the door, she'd correctly assume he was wallowing. Then she'd never leave.

So he'd have to wallow in the light. And rummage through his backpack first. As loudly as he safely could he yanked the cord of his desk lamp and grabbed his bag from the floor. Just in case she decided to check anyway, he pulled out a math book and laid it out on his desk. He was taking Algebra II. Again.

Another shuffle. He swung around in his spinny chair and opened his mouth to tell her he was fine.

"Good evening, Daniel."

And he closed his mouth, squishing his lips together in a tight line.

"Good night, Vlad. Get out of my house."

The creep had been standing in his room for God knows how long. The dramatic old man pressed a hand to his chest and lamented, "I'm hurt, little badger. It's been too long. What, three days or so?"

"Well, I'm glad we had this chat. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have math homework to get done."

Vlad tsked and shook his head. "You poor thing. Cursed with your father's skill in mathematics. Your grades haven't improved since our last discussion on this matter. Oh well. It doesn't look like you'll need them."

Danny didn't have the patience for banter. He hardly had the patience for not punching him in the face, and he only managed that because he was too tired for a fight. Otherwise he would welcome the stress outlet. "Do you want something?"

"Thought I should check in. In light of...current events."

He wanted a response. He was drawing his question out, being the jerk he always was, trying to provoke his foe, more than twenty years his junior. The older Danny got, the more ridiculous it seemed. And today he wasn't playing any games.

Vlad appeared to sense this. "You made me look like a fool today, Daniel."

"Always happy to be of service." Alright, so he could be a little sarcastic. Plasmius made it too easy.

"You look terrible," he stated, slowly pacing the room.

"Thanks. So I'm ugly _and_ stupid. What's new?"

"You are in deep trouble, young man. Deep, deep trouble."

"Again, what's new?"

Vlad seemed to tire of rambling after that. He stopped directly in front of the boy and locked him in his sleazy eyes. "Tell me what happened," he demanded, voice low and threatening.

"Well, I failed algebra the first time because I didn't have time to study. Math is practice—that's what the teacher says anyway. Honestly not a fan."

"Daniel, you're being difficult—"

It was Danny's turn to feign surprise. "I'm being difficult? Well, why didn't you say so? I'll stop immediately. Ask anything."

"Daniel, last—"

"It all started when I was born. You've met my parents. My first Christmas, one of Santa's reindeer peed on me. After that—"

"Daniel, stop you're childish chattering and tell me what I want to know," he growled.

"You and my mom," Danny rattled, "Are never, ever, ever—getting together! You-oo—"

Vlad lost it in a flash. Danny wasn't sure if he didn't have enough time to defend himself or if he just didn't have the energy. All he knew that one moment he was sitting and the next he was suspended against a wall by his neck. His head made a crack upon impact with the drywall and all he could think was, _Is this how Mr. Baker felt? Did he feel anything?_

"You are an imbecile," Vlad snarled in his ear, "And I will not tolerate your churlish behavior. Now _tell me!_ "

A grimace-grin spread across Danny's pale face and his eyes flashed green, but otherwise he remained stationary.

"Do you want to know what happened, Vladdie?" he taunted quietly, using one of his dad's favorite nicknames for him, "Do you want to know what I did?"

"Yes," Vlad barked, tightening his grip on the teen's neck, "Now tell me!"

Danny's blue eyes were wide open and clear. His expression was ominous and it made Vlad visibly uncomfortable. He shifted his head forward as far as he could so that he could whisper it in his ear. Vlad had proven his interest in the theatrical time over time. Maybe they were spending too much time together.

"I did it," he breathed, "I killed that man, I did it. I did, I killed that man, I killed David Baker…."

Vlad was frozen, aghast. Danny chuckled darkly. He didn't think he'd ever see the day his actions would shock Vlad Plasmius, master of illicit business practices and generally despicable human being.

"H-how?" Vlad gasped, releasing the teen as soon as he regained mobility. The boy did not fall on his feet. He crumpled into a sitting position on the floor and was gasping frantically in...laughter?

"I did it...I killed Mr. Baker…."

"How, Daniel? Talk to me, son, how and why did you kill David Baker?"

The gasps transitioned softly into something different. The boy was hysterical. Vlad turned around and ran a hand through his hair in shock. _Is Daniel crying?_

"Shoosh," he cooed uncertainly, kneeling down beside him, careful not to come within reaching distance, "Shoosh, you're being silly, child."

Danny hiccuped and wiped his nose. "You wanted me to be your child," he sobbed, "Children cry."

Vlad merely looked on, horrified, at the deplorable scene before him. He'd seen Daniel in difficult situations before. He'd put Daniel in difficult situations before. But this….this was beyond everything to date.

"It was an accident," he sniffed, "But I did it, I still did it…."

Finally, Vlad gathered the courage to comfort the boy. He patted his shoulder gently, still keeping him at arm's reach, and said, "There, there…"

"Is this why you came here?" Danny snorted, flinching but not quite rejecting the contact.

Vlad took his hand back anyway. "What?"

"You came here to gloat, didn't you? Came here to see me at my most vulnerable and smash me down. I know you're game, Plasmius, I know how you work. I bet you even put Spectra up to this…."

"Spectra?" _Of course she's involved somehow. No one's better at emotional manipulation, except myself of course._

He nodded and held up his shaky right hand. "Her—I thought Bertrand was Baker and I—I shot him…." His palm was illuminated by glowing ectoplasm, and he formed a fist.

Suddenly it all made sense to Vlad. A little shapeshifting confusion, a little heat of the moment impulsivity. Bam.

As if to exemplify the very mindset that was necessary for such an incident to occur, the ghost boy swung his hand downward and an ectoblast flew out, effectively knocking over his nightstand. Vlad stood automatically to survey the damage, and the boy flinched violently, pressing his back flat against the wall.

"What's happening to me?" Danny whispered, horrified and shaking.

The bedroom door swung open.

"Danny?" Jazz's head peeked around the door, and her eyes immediately fell on the cowering boy in the corner. And the evil half ghost standing above him. "Vlad!"

"Jazz—" Danny cried.

"Get away from him!" she commanded Vlad, still in his human form. Though she was in her pajamas, she managed to pull out a small ectogun and pointed it at his chest.

"Ms. Fenton, there's no need to—"

"Go!" she shouted.

Movement on the stairs. Two Fentons accounted for, only two could be coming. So Vlad took the best option available to him at the moment: he phased through the wall and flew away.

Jazz rushed over to her little brother, who was taking deep, calming breaths. "Did he hurt you? What did he do? What did he want?" she pleaded.

"Ghoooost!" Jack called, flying through the door Jazz had left open. In his arms was a fully charged, loaded anti-ghost bazooka of some sort. Jazz couldn't recall having seen it before, but then again she could never keep up with her parents' inventions. "Jazzerincess, where's the ghost?"

"Uh, no ghost here, Dad," she excused herself, "Just, uh, thought I heard something, so I brought this ectogun, and…" She pointed said weapon in the direction of the debris which was previously the contents of Danny's end table.

Maddie sprang in around her husband, another weapon ready to fire. One look at Danny told Jazz he was on the verge of passing out. Maddie seemed to notice that too, and she swept over to him, jumpsuit and all. She yanked off one black glove and put a hand against his head. "You don't feel warm, sweetie. Are you feeling okay?"

"Just tired. Nightmare, is all."

"Can you stand up?"

He stared up at her black goggles and nodded hazily. She offered him a hand and he took it, using it to stand. Then promptly fall over again.

"Danno!" Jack called out, dropping the bazooka thing on the ground in his haste to reach his younger child. He scooped him up in his arms without issue and placed him on his bed. "Are you alright, kiddo?"

"Hm?" his son grunted.

"I think he's dehydrated, I'll get him some water…" Maddie speculated, starting for the door.

"Could be a ghost. Should we scan him for ecto-contamination?"

" _No!_ " Jazz shouted.

Both parents stopped where they were and stared at their frantic daughter in confusion. Danny's had lolled back, and his stomach rolled over.

"Are you feeling okay, hon?" her mother asked, cautious.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she explained quickly, "It's just, uh, a stomach bug."

"A ghostly stomach bug?" Jack asked.

"No, just a normal stomach bug."

As if on cue, Danny propped himself up on an elbow and vomited onto the floor beside his bed. "Ugh…"

Everyone grimaced. _Ew._

"It doesn't….look like ecto-contamination," Maddie observed.

Jazz's heart was racing. _This might be the closest they've ever come to figuring out his secret_. _And at the worst possible time, too._ "Probably something he ate," the redhead blurted.

"I thought it was a stomach bug?" her mother asked.

"Either one," she spewed, "I mean, I dunno. Not a doctor."

Jack knelt beside Danny on the other side of his bed. "You feel better now, son?" He gave a weak thumbs up, and Jazz breathed a little easier.

"I'd better get the bleach," Maddie sighed, heading out the door.

"No worries, Mads, I'll keep the boy company," her husband called out after her. "You want to go back to bed, Jazz?"

 _Not exactly._ She still wasn't quite sure they wouldn't decide to check her brother's ectoplasm levels then blast him into oblivion. She opened her mouth to insist she'd stay, but Jack beat her to the punch. "Really, if he has got a bug, you wouldn't wanna catch it. Go on to sleep. We've got this."

Jazz could hardly remember hearing him speak so softly. Danny looked like he'd fallen asleep, tear-stained cheeks pale. She was reminded of when they were both little children. Of course, she'd believed herself to be an adult at an early age. Perhaps the only adult in the entire house. But now, she realized that perhaps she hadn't given her parents enough credit. They were a little work-obsessed, but they obviously truly cared for their children.

"Good night, Daddy."

"Good night, princess."

 _Please don't kill my brother while I'm asleep._

….

"Daniel."

The boy in question groaned and rolled over in bed. _Five more minutes._

"Daniel, wake up."

He shot into sitting position, instantly on alert. _Plasmius._

"We didn't get to finish our conversation earlier."

Danny rubbed his eyes and tried to remember. Then he regretted trying to remember. Vlad showing up, wanting to know what was going on. Him telling Vlad, him crying in front of Vlad of all people. "Look, I'm sorry I unloaded on you. I've been feeling a little crazy lately."

"I've noticed," the billionaire remarked flatly.

"So what do you want?"

"I want to offer you a deal."

 _This ought to be great._ "Let me guess, my soul for you not tarring and feathering me in front of the entire town?"

"Have you been paying more attention in history class lately?"

"That's beside the point," Danny grunted. He always hated it when Vlad expressed an interest in his schooling. Things like his grades were supposed to be confidential, private. But if Vlad knew about them, then he could know about anything. He could invade Danny's personal life at will and he hated that.

"You're not going to be tarred and feathered," the man sighed, "At least, not if you accept my deal."

"So you don't want my soul. How about my dad's life? My mom's hand in marriage?" he scoffed, settling back into bed, "I can't give you any of those things, and you can't protect me. So if you'll excuse me, I have to get up in the morning."

"Get up and go to school," Vlad sighed, "That same place you were, oh, about twenty-six hours before now? That worked out fabulously last time."

Danny began to fake snore. Rather than get irritated like he had before, Vlad merely sighed and moved on. "I want to help you, Daniel, believe it or not. You don't have to say yes, because I'm doing it anyway. Just know that I will call on you to return the favor."

"That's messed up," he complained, "You can't just say that. That's like building someone a surprise torture dungeon and saying, 'Wow! You owe me a blank check now, congrats!'"

"I truly believe that one day you will see the light and you will join me, by my side, as my son."

"God, Vlad, you're delusional! Can't you see that's never going to happen? Can't you see I love my family?"

"And they love you too. At least, they do right now. All of that love could turn to loathing in an instant, and you know it. I'd condemn Phantom, rat you out, then they would hate you forever. Not Jazz maybe, but your parents. And they're the ones with guns. The guns that catch ghosts, torture ghosts, kill ghosts. Ghosts like you."

Daniel was silent. Vlad felt his web digging into the boy's brain.

"The guns that would be trained on you, Daniel. If you don't stay calm, or if I'm not on your side, you will end up on an examination table."

"My parents would never do that to me. They love me."

"The love their son. Their human son. But what are you? Some demon that possessed their son, took him away from them, and made his body to malicious things." After a pause, he continued, "If it's not your parents, it'll be the Guys in White. You think they'll care you're part human? You killed a man, and that's more than enough for them to lock you up and throw away the key."

"You'd be giving yourself up too; even you aren't that stupid."

"You're the one who said I was delusional." Vlad knew he was getting to the boy. He saw him shudder, and knew his new plan was working. "So that's why you have to trust me. Why you'll do what I ask without question."

"I'm not making any promises about anything, so please," he beseeched, exhausted, "Leave me alone. Leave me and my family alone."

Another dramatic sigh. "Afraid I can't promise that. I will not blame you for what you did, and you will act completely sane. You will not draw attention to yourself. If I'm shielding you, you should prove worth shielding."

Thumbs up from the boy. "Got it. I'll just do the same thing I was going to do anyway."

"That means no more breakdowns."

"Sorry if I traumatized you with my emotions. I'll try to do it with my fists next time."

"Good night, Daniel."

No response.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"Are you sure you're well enough for school, Danny?" Maddie cooed at her son.

Stiffly, he nodded. She didn't quite believe him. His shoulders were hunched over a half-eaten piece of toast and his eyes were far away. Something was wrong with her boy, and it might have been something more than physical illness.

"One week til Christmas break," Jack reminded him crisply in between snickerdoodles.

The entire family was congregated around the kitchen table. They'd been swept up in work, Jazz was home, Danny was sick. Family time was necessary, so Maddie had insisted she and her husband pull themselves away from the lab long enough to at least see Danny off to school.

Maddie sighed and sipped her coffee. "Isn't it a bit early for cookies, Jack?" she asked her husband.

"No such thing," he replied, too loudly, she thought, "Got a big day ahead of us, gotta be prepared. Gotta eat."

His smile made her smile. Even in the worst of times, his personality shined like a beacon. Her beacon.

The family paused at the sound of a door opening and subsequently closing.

"Hello?" Tucker called as he strode through the foyer. "Anybody home?"

Usually, Maddie didn't mind Tucker's presence at all. Danny needed his friends, but she found a misplaced twinge of jealousy inside her. She had to scrounge up minutes for time with her son, and those few minutes never seemed to be enough. For all that Danny told her in those small increments of time, they may as well not talk at all.

She bet Danny would tell Tucker what was bothering him. At least he was sharing. Feelings aren't meant to be bottled up like that.

The teenager stuck his head into the kitchen and appeared relieved to see everyone alive and whole around the table. "Hey dude, you ready for school?"

The "dude" in question gave a lethargic nod and gently pushed his plate away. He stood mechanically and grabbed a tattered backpack from the floor.

"I'm driving!" Jazz exclaimed, shoving her plate of greenish, half eaten eggs away with more haste than her brother had.

"In a hurry, Jazzy?" Jack asked his daughter, looking hurt, "I was thinking maybe you could come downstairs so your mother and I could show you a thing or two about our new weapon." He didn't get to see her much anymore, and Maddie knew it hurt him.

"Well, it's not often I get to drive my little brother to school now is it?"

Tucker looked the part of a not-so-stoic martyr. "Don't worry, Danny. Once my parents decide to get me my very own, sweet piece of wheels, this never has to happen again."

"Ha ha, very funny," Jazz sighed, grabbing her purse from its position beside her, "Let's get a move on."

Maddie had considered getting her son a car when he'd turned sixteen, then again when he turned seventeen. But he was already so bad at following his curfew and so good at disappearing to who-knows-where that she didn't figure he needed faster, farther reaching transportation than his moped.

"Yeah," Tucker deadpanned, "Let's."

Within a minute, she was alone with her husband, and it was time to get back to work.

…

"Seriously though, toast?" Tucker asked as soon as Jazz's car pulled away.

"What?" Danny wasn't listening. He was watching, scanning the flow of people in front of him as if at any moment one would point at him and scream, "There's the Ghost Boy! There he is!" As if that would happen. After all these years.

"Last time I saw you eat toast, it was some shape-shifter pretending to be you!"

 _That would solve everything, wouldn't it, Tuck? If I weren't me. We could file this under another framing mishap, like the kidnapping or the robberies. If I weren't me…_

"Sorry?" he wondered softly.

"I'm just worried about you. You see Sam?"

No, he didn't see Sam. The realization dropped like a rock to the bottom of his stomach, stacked onto the hundreds of other concerns weighing him down.

"Maybe she's inside," Tuck speculated when Danny didn't answer. "Come on, let's get to class."

Danny followed him as if in a trance through the hallways. Turning corners, dodging people, the works, all on autopilot. The faces he saw were numerous and familiar, but he noticed none of them. The President of the United States could have popped around a corner and shouted, "Boo!" He wouldn't have noticed.

What he did notice was when Tucker suddenly stopped. He only registered this because he'd been walking directly behind him. Under normal circumstances, this abrupt stop would have resulted in a bit of a jostle. Instead, completely without his direction or consent, about half of Danny's body simply phased through Tuck. Danny, automatically baffled, leapt backward and told himself to re-solidify.

Face grayer than it had been moments before, Danny scanned the crowd again. He noted an enhanced degree of exhaustion on some faces and twinges of excitement on others. Not the sort of excitement you get on Christmas morning when you're sure a brand new fluffy puppy is waiting for you downstairs; the sort of excitement you get from observing a catastrophe, a catastrophe so far removed from yourself that the second-hand emotions sweep you up on a rollercoaster high.

Everyone was staring at the same spot. Danny felt nauseous. It was a normal hallway, a hallway he'd walked hundreds of times. Lockers adorned either side, broken up by doors every so often. The larger throng of people was arranged around a small group of freshmen. The small group of freshmen surrounded one particular girl, a girl Danny may have remembered seeing at some point. Maybe in the halls, maybe during a ghost fight. He wasn't sure, and he surely couldn't remember her name.

This girl, whoever she was, bawled loudly despite the comfort of her friends. Her chest heaved, and snot dripped down her face, even over her mouth as she cried, "My locker! My locker…."

Overcoming his subconscious reluctance, the ghost boy averted his eyes to the object of her hysteria.

 _Oh, that locker._

He could tell whoever cleaned up had tried to remove the dent. It had worked for the most part, but the slight inversion of the metal combined its the proximity to a certain office and the light, light pink mark on the linoleum gave everyone the clues necessary to deduce what had happened here.

"I'm sorry, man," Tucker whispered, "I suck at navigation….we can go around…."

Before Danny even registered his obligation to choke out a reply, Lancer came striding past them. "Sherlock Holmes, let me through," he called, squeezing through the still increasing mass of spectators.

"I'm very sorry, Miss Guildenstern," the teacher apologized, "We emailed your parents about your new locker, but I guess….oh well." He handed the girl the keys, undoubtedly getting mucous wiped on his fingers in the process. "Would you like to go to the office? We can call your parents, see if they can come get you."

Taking another tissue from one of the other girls, she nodded. Then blowed her nose, possibly spraying everyone within a three foot radius. Though they seemed too interested in the spectacle to care.

"The rest of you, get to class," Lancer yelled over the cacophony of whispers, placing a hand on the freshman's back to lead her to the office, "We still start at eight am sharp!"

Footsteps swirled around Danny, but he didn't dare move. He felt someone grab his arm—probably Tucker—but he still just stood there. Voices blended together and all of the noise sloshed around his head. He felt as if the putrid liquid which sometime drips from trash-bags had drip dripped into him, filling his skull until his very brain felt sea sick and could no longer bear the smell.

Soon he found himself sprinting to the nearest restroom. He flung himself toward the door, he flung the door open, and he flung himself into the nearest stall. Clutching the toilet seat with his bare hands, he vomited.

What little breakfast he'd consumed that morning came right back up. After a few more heaves, every ounce of water he'd consumed over the past twelve hours made an appearance too. After heaving up saliva for a full minute, he slumped back from his knees into a more comfortable sitting position. Wiping his hair back from his sweaty forehead, he let out a small groan.

Then he noticed something. The toilet seat, it was….frozen? Frightened, Danny propped himself back up on his knees and examined it. Reluctantly now that he was no longer violently ill, he touched a single finger to the surface to judge the temperature.

 _Cold as ice. Looks like ice. Must be ice._

He looked down at his hands, now palms up and limp in his lap. He looked at them and he shook his head. _What's wrong with me?_

The door to the bathroom banged open suddenly, making Danny glad he'd at least had the habitual drive to shut and lock the stall door.

"You really don't think it's true though?"

 _Kwan._

"Of course not. Phantom has been saving us from ghosts for years! Why would he suddenly up and go all slasher movie on us?"

 _Dash._

"Ghosts are weird I guess," Kwan sighed, "You've got a point."

"Damn right I've got a point," the blond football star proclaimed, "I'm right."

Danny figured he'd better get out of there before they were done with their business. Despite his recent gains in the height department, he still had nothing on their bulk. And he doubted they'd miss an opportunity to harass him if presented with one. So he stood up, flushed the toilet, and stepped out of the stall.

"Hey, look, it's Fentina!" Dash jabbed, zipping up his pants and turning to face his favorite freak.

"Having hormonal troubles, Fentina? Is it that time of the month again?"

Danny didn't grace them with a response. He'd gotten used to their ridicule, and any other day he would've walked right out of that bathroom. Maybe after a sly response or two. He wouldn't even have looked back. Instead, as soon as his hands were clean and dry, he whirled around to face the bullies.

He opened his mouth to say something, though he never knew what. Maybe it would have been, _Not in the mood guys,_ or, _Why don't you take your outdated joke books and shove them up your…_

But even his pondering was interrupted. Tucker burst through the door, looking rather out of breath for the short stretch of hall there was between where they'd been and here. "There you are! Sorry," he panted, "Lot of people out there. Have we always had this many students?" Then he noticed the jocks. "Oh."

Danny exhaled, eyes downcast. "Let's go to class."

"Oooo, Fen-nerd and Tuckno-Freak are going to class!" Dash mocked.

Dash and Kwan guffawed until Danny's voice sliced through the air with all the nuance and precision of a brick. "Maybe you should come too. Sounds like you could use a little class."

After two stunned beats, Kwan picked up the exchange. "Psh, as if we haven't heard that one before."

Again, Danny decided to say nothing. He took two strides toward the exit before a meaty hand slammed against his shoulder.

"Watch it, Fenton."

His eyes momentarily flashed green and he shoved Dash's hand away with his own. This lead to Dash shoving back at him, this time a two handed shove to the upper chest, a shove that sent the hybrid to the floor.

"Cut it out—" Tucker objected.

"I think he's right," Kwan suggested, uneasy, "Let's go to class…."

As Danny tried to fight his disorientation and get up, Dash reached down and pulled him up by his shirt. "I said, watch it!"

"I say, screw you," Danny told him plainly.

Dash through a punch at his stomach, and Danny gasped for air.

"You let him go now, you…."

"You're hurting him, stop," Kwan insisted, placing his hands on his friend's shoulders.

Finally, Dash listened. He released his classmate, who would have fallen to the ground again if not for Tucker's quick catch. With a huff, he turned and strutted out of the restroom. Kwan lagged behind and mouthed a quick, "Sorry," before departing as well.

"You alright?"

"Never better."

….

Lancer was late to class, but he spent no time getting to work.

"Alright, kids, open up your copies of _All Quiet_ to page 103. If you did the assigned reading, you'd know that our protagonist Paul is hiding out in the trenches, presumed lost by his friends…"

Danny and Tucker pulled out their books, but neither really had any significant urge to follow along. Tuck had his PDA on his lap and Danny had a notebook ready for doodles; it was basically their normal setup, minus Sam.

"Mikey, why don't you start us off?" Lancer suggested, pointing toward the front row.

"Already it has become somewhat lighter. Steps hasten over me-"

Danny heard the story in flashes. The more the scene unravelled, though, the more he kept his head down, the more he prayed for a ghost attack or a fire drill. It was too early in the day to ask for a bathroom break, especially with Dash sitting in the corner smugly.

"Just as I am about to turn round a little, something heavy stumbles, and with a crash a body falls over me into the shell-hole….I do not think at all, I make no decision—I strike madly home, and feel only how the body suddenly convulses, then becomes limp, and collapses...my hand is sticky and wet….the man gurgles….as though he bellows, every gasping breath is like a cry, a thunder—but it is only my heart….I want to stop his mouth, stuff it with earth, stab him again, he must be quiet, he is betraying me…"

"Very good, Mikey," Lancer commends, "Star, you can pick up where he left off."

"So I crawl away to the farthest corner and stay there, my eyes glued on him, my hand grasping the knife—ready, if he stirs, to spring at him again. But he won't do so any more, I can hear that already in his gurgling….I have but one desire, to get away….minute after minute trickles away….I dare not look again at the dark figure in the shell-hole….I notice my bloody hand and suddenly feel nauseated…."

"Kwan, you're next."

"It is early morning….the figure opposite me moves….he is dead, I say to myself, he must be dead, he doesn't feel anything any more; it is only the body that is gurgling there….the head tries to raise itself, for a moment the groaning becomes louder, his forehead sinks back upon his arm….the man is not dead, he is dying, but he is not dead….he opens his eyes….the body is still perfectly still, without a sound, the gurgle has ceased, but the eyes cry out, yell, all the life is gathered together in them for one tremendous effort to flee, gathered together there in a dreadful terror of death, of me."

"My legs give way and I drop on my elbows. 'No, no,' I whisper….eyes follow me….I am powerless to move so long as they are there….I raise one hand, I must show him that I want to help him, I stroke his forehead….there is water in the mud, down at the bottom of the crater...I climb down….scoop up the yellow water….he gulps it down….I unbutton his tunic in order to bandage him if it is possible….'I want to help you, Comrade, camerade, camerade, camerade—' eagerly repeating the word, to make him understand….three stabs. My field dressing covers them, the blood runs out under it, I press it tighter; there; he groans. That is all I can do. Now we must wait, wait."

This was too vivid for Danny. When Lancer pointed to the next unlucky soul and that unlucky soul began reading, he made a decision to deliberately block whatever words came next. While he sensed a drop in the room when the man finally died, he is otherwise successful. He caught only the end of Paulina's now-sniffling rendition of Paul's monologue very clearly.

"'Take twenty years of my life, comrade, and stand up—take more, for I do not know what I can even attempt to do with it now.' It is quiet, the front is still except for the crackle of rifle fire. The bullets rain over, they are not fired haphazard, but shrewdly aimed from all sides. I cannot get out. "

"Mr. Fenton." Lancer spoke, and Danny cringed.

Slowly, shakily, he picked up the book and began to read, "'I will write to your wife,' I say hastily to the dead man, 'I will write to her, she must hear it from me, I will tell her everything I have told you, she shall not suffer, I will help her, and your parents too, and your child—'

"His tunic is half open. The pocket-book is easy to find. But I hesitate to open it. In it is the book with his name. So long as I do not know his name perhaps I may still forget him, time will obliterate it, this picture. But his name, it is a nail that will be hammered into me and never come out again. It has the power to recall this for ever, it will always come back and stand before me.

"Irresolutely I take the wallet in my hand. It slips out of my hand and falls open. Some pictures and letters drop out. I gather them up and want to put them back again, but the strain I am under, the uncertainty, the hunger, the danger, these hours with the dead man have made me desperate, I want to hasten the relief, to intensify and to end the torture, as one strikes an unendurably painful hand against the trunk of a tree, regardless of everything.

"There are portraits of a woman and a little girl, small amateur photographs taken against an ivyclad wall. Along with them are letters. I take them out and try to read them. Most of it I do not understand, it is so hard to decipher and I scarcely know any French. But each word I translate pierces me like a shot in the chest;—like a stab in the chest.

My brain is taxed beyond endurance. But I realise this much, that I will never dare to write to these people as I intended. Impossible. I look at the portraits once more; they are clearly not rich people. I might send them money anonymously if I earn anything later on. I seize upon that, it is at least something to hold on to. This dead man is bound up with my life, therefore I must do everything, promise everything in order to save myself; I swear blindly that I mean to live only for his sake and his family, with wet lips I try to placate him—and deep down in me lies the hope that I may buy myself off in this way and perhaps even get out of this; it is a little stratagem: if only I am allowed to escape, then I will see to it. So I open the book and read slowly:—Gerard Duval, compositor."

Danny stopped short before the section could end. Sweating profusely now and pale, he closed his book and closed his eyes.

"Is something wrong, Mr. Fenton?"

 _Yes,_ he wanted to say, _Everything is wrong._

But he could not say that. "I'm not feeling well. Can I go to the bathroom?" he murmured weakly, not waiting for a response before brushing his books into his backpack.

"If you must," the tired teacher lamented, "Mr. Foley, you can pick up where he left off."

Again, Danny tried not to listen, but he couldn't stop himself from pausing in the doorway momentarily before fleeing.

"By afternoon I am calmer," Tucker reads, having already finished a few sentences, "My fear was groundless. The name troubles me no more. The madness passes."

…..

The halls were empty in the middle of first hour, and the silence left his ears buzzing. Danny went back to the bathroom.

There was a strange quality about the restroom mirror that day; he looked at himself, but he seemed distorted somehow. His face did not look like his face, his eyes, nose, mouth, even his skin seemed peculiar somehow.

Curious, he ran his fingers over his cheeks as if to check that he was solid. Immediately, he was repulsed by the cold moistness of his clammy fingers. Immediately tears came to his eyes, and immediately he summoned all of his self control. He couldn't cry here. Though the bathroom was empty, someone could walk in at any time.

So what could he do? He certainly didn't want to go home. Maybe he could just stay here all day. Hide in the bathroom like the _brave_ superhero he knew he was.

He wasn't sure why he did exactly what he did at that specific moment. He wasn't sure why his survival instincts didn't kick in and kick him in the head for being so irresponsible. But at that specific moment, he muttered, "Goin' ghost."

And he did go ghost. White rings began at his midsection and expanded vertically in either direction. Pretty soon, he was staring at himself again, but this time that self had snow white hair and glowing green eyes.

His situation was nothing like that of Paul the soldier and Gerard the printer. Gerard the printer was also Gerard the soldier, an enemy to Paul and Paul knew that. He acted out of self defense in a war where men were being killed left and right. Trapped by gunfire and startled, of course he lashed out. Then, trapped with the body, of course he felt bad.

Danny felt bad. He felt very bad, he felt terrible. He felt as it his entire world was teetering on needlepoint; he couldn't step, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't _think_ without the guilt, the fear that at any moment the entire globe would plunge into an abyss of ruin. An abyss filled with fire, an abyss filled with ice. An abyss with no escape.

Paul pledged to write to the man's wife. He pledged to send her money. Then he just….decided against it?

Maybe Danny could do something like that. Mr. Baker had had a wife. God, but his stomach twisted at the thought. He was not an enemy soldier in a live or die situation. How could he ever explain himself?

How could this ever madness pass? How could that name ever no longer trouble him? No matter what he did from that point on, he'd already done the unthinkable. How could he pay for his negligence, his mistake? How could he ever walk up to anyone, especially a grieving widow, and explain that a man died because he himself couldn't take a few extra seconds to analyze the situation? A few extra seconds to notice that the "ghost" didn't glow?

He knew that he couldn't. He couldn't forget, he couldn't seek forgiveness. Not that he deserved either of those things. So again, what could he ever do?

The bathroom door creaked open, and Danny became invisible. He half expected Tucker, but it was some underclassman. Lancer was probably keeping his friend on a short leash; didn't want the pair getting up to any trouble, he supposed.

Not wanting to stick around waiting for the boy to leave, Danny phased through the wall into the hallway, maintaining his invisibility the entire time. Slow and spiritless, he floated down the hallway with no destination in mind.

Unsurprisingly, he found himself levitating in front of a certain office. He simply stared at the door for several minutes, until he felt someone walk right through him.

Danny phased in after the teacher. "You called?" the new arrival asked, meeting the vice principal in Baker's office.

"Yes," the VP replied, "I thought since you had a free period this hour you might help me clean up. They already took pictures."

The room did indeed need cleaning. Books, papers, strewn everywhere. Debris scattered across the floor. A good number of cardboard boxes were stacked mid-room, and a few of them were already packed with stuff.

"His wife didn't want to do this?"

"No, would've been too much for her. We figured we'd get his things boxed up at least."

The new teacher began sorting things. It was quiet for about thirty seconds before she asked, "Why was he here so late anyway?"

"Apparently he wanted to take another look at a student file before Monday but he couldn't find it. Came back to look."

"Which student's?"

"You can look in the corner. It's scattered everywhere now."

As the teacher got up to look in said corner, Danny moved too. And as he read the name, written in sharpie on the front of a manila folder, he stopped breathing. Not that he had to breathe in the form anyway.

The teacher crouched down to read it too, then stood up and shook her head. "Daniel Fenton. David shouldn't have tried; the kid's hopeless."

 **Author's Note: Sorry not sorry for the long excerpts. I sliced and spliced parts of Chapter 9 of Erich Maria Remarque's _All Quiet on the Western Front._ I tried to find that line between enough-to-get-the-point-across and not-too-much-to-bore-them. Hope it worked.**

 **Also, I've got a question for all of you. I got a really great Guest review last time. If you're still reading this, Guest, I did not have a laughing episode when I read it. S/he expressed legitimate concerns about Danny getting away with murder. To everyone, what do you think Danny would have to do to atone for his actions? Is it even possible?**

 **Thanks for reading, following, favorite-ing, and reviewing!**


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Danny had credit recovery second hour. Apparently there were some classes which you couldn't fail and still graduate. Since, as a senior, Danny had a vested interest in getting his diploma on time, he showed up in the library everyday he could for online classes.

The format was good for him. Online classes had a flexibility normal ones didn't, allowing him to learn anywhere anytime of day in whatever intervals he could fit in. As a result he was both learning more than he had the first time around and achieving a better grade.

Sam and Tucker didn't share this period with him. He supposed that whoever was in charge of scheduling knew that if the three of them were together nothing would get done. Initially, Danny had been mad about it, but now he was grateful. Now he needed some designated time alone.

Unfortunately, being alone meant being alone with himself, and he wasn't very fond of himself lately.

When he ducked into the library a few minutes early, the librarian nodded at him from her desk. She'd take his attendance. The room was about half the size of their gymnasium, and it was a maze of shelves. The computers were located in the back corner, huge and wheezing, one per little table. Every budget season, after all of the property damage and security cost was accounted for, there was never money left over for new technology.

Since Danny was the only student slotted to be here at this time, he got the spinny chair. He loved the spinny chair. The ragged, well-stained spinny chair.

While the program started up, he very carefully readied his books. If he played his cards just right, he wouldn't have to think about anything except Biology and American History for the next sixty minutes. And he really needed sixty minutes of not thinking.

The deck, however, was stacked against him. He'd hardly written down _Chapter 7_ at the top of a notebook page before alarm bells sounded. The whole school collectively groaned, but Danny was particularly vehement when he cursed whatever spectral being had decided to romp around the school that day.

A faint rev in the distance told him just which ghost it was too. His headache was back.

"Johnny, why?" he grumbled, rolling backward in his spinny chair with a flounce. With less haste than usual, he stood and began his walk toward the door of the library. Johnny wasn't a malicious ghost; as long as his girlfriend Kitty was safe, he usually just showed up to blow off some steam and cause general mayhem for the sake of it. He didn't set out to hurt anyone.

Bar random accidents, everyone was pretty safe.

When Danny strode past the front desk, he noticed that the librarian had already fled. He guessed she'd joined the throng of running and screaming people he could hear outside. Casper High kids, as citizens of Amity Park, would usually have reacted much more calmly to a mid-morning ghostly surprise. Something cold and grisly rumbled inside Danny when he realized what had set them so on edge.

When Danny raised a hand to open the library door, it flung into him on its own. The wood smacked him in the face and the metal handle was shoved harshly into his abdomen.

"Danny, wait!" two voices called out in unison.

"Tucker? Sam?" Danny asked, clutching a now bleeding nose.

His two friends occupied the entire doorway, gaping at him, for five full seconds before they descended upon him with relieved smiles.

"I'm so glad you're okay!" Sam remarked, pulling him into a hug.

"We were worried about you, dude," Tucker commented.

Danny returned Sam's hug with the hand that wasn't red with blood. "I was okay, before my face met the door," he snapped, continuing to pinch his nose, "Don't worry, I bleed easily. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some ghost butt to kick."

"No you do not," the girl fumed, grabbing his arm before he could walk out, "If you go out there, the only ghost butt that gets kicked will be yours."

He looked at Tucker to back him up; he didn't help. "She's right, we think it'd be best if you stayed out of this one."

Now it was Danny's turn to fume. "Guys, this is kind of my job, so—"

"This is not your job. Consider yourself unemployed, cuz you're not going."

"You're not my mother, Sam—"

"Yeah, right I'm not your mother, I'm just threatening to beat you, she'd actually literally shoot you!"

Danny didn't reply. Sam didn't say anything else. Tucker merely looked down uncomfortably.

Then Tucker's face froze. "Hey, Danny, did you notice you were freezing yourself to the floor?"

He hadn't noticed he was freezing himself to the floor. And that was honestly alarming. His body, responding to said alarm, completely without his permission, immediately became both invisible and intangible. Sam and Tucker cried out his name in unison, unable to see as he stumbled backward and half of him fell through the burnt orange carpet.

As quickly as he could, he rose to floor-level again and willed himself back to normal, gasping. His head ached terribly, and an electric sense of foreboding consumed him.

"What's wrong with me?" he gasped, voice raw.

Sam and Tucker exchanged a worried look. Each of them grabbed one of his shoulders and hauled him to his feet. There was an old couch nearby, covered haphazardly by a sheet. Danny recovered himself just enough to reach it without assistance, then promptly collapsed.

At least his nose had stopped bleeding. Still, he both looked and felt as if he'd been punched in the face off a building, minus the associated broken bones.

The sound of Johnny's motorcycle was getting closer. Sam and Tucker pulled ectoguns out of their pockets and assumed defensive positions while Danny curled up hopelessly helplessly on the couch.

In that moment he felt like the biggest failure in this plane of existence and the next. Something in his chest cracked, and he placed all of the concentration he could on keeping his body exactly as it was in the state that it was. If Danny could no longer protect the town, what good was he? What good was he to anyone as a weakling and a coward? There had been times when everyone in town (bar his closest friends) thought he was a villain and a demon. It sucked, it hurt, but he himself had known that he was valuable. That he was good, that he was helping. That all of his personal sacrifices were worth it if he could make people safer.

Now, that was gone. Soon everyone would know what he had done. Even if they didn't believe it now, he knew that they would. Guilt seeped into every cavity of his being and despair followed it. They would be right to hate him. They would be right to fear him. He was scary, he was dangerous, just as he had always known he eventually would be.

He held back hot, angry tears, and cursed his stupid headache!

The trio heard Johnny Thirteen calling out in the halls. "Where's baby Phantom? Doesn't he want to come and play?"

Determined and newly invigorated, Danny stood. White, glowing rings began at his waist and transformed him. Hands shaking, he wiped the still-red blood off his face and made his way towards the door.

"You're being stupid!"

"Do we stop him?"

"Hell yeah we stop him! You got a thermos, Tucker?"

Danny was hardly listening. That is, he could hardly hear them over the pounding in his head. Either way, he was determined to keep going. They didn't understand; they couldn't understand.

"It's...in my backpack. In the classroom."

The ghost boy phased right through the door at this point, and his friends ran after him.

"Come on, your parents will be here soon!"

"They'll take care of it!"

"Think of it as a sick day!"

Annoyed, Danny went invisible and flew in the direction of the noise. He found Johnny in the gymnasium, doing donuts on the basketball court while his Shadow threw hard orange balls at people. Frightened teenagers and staff were still scattered around the room, running every which direction. He saw Mr. Lancer yelling at them to use the fire exit, but no one was listening.

When they saw Phantom, every single one of them skidded to a stop and stared.

"Looking for me?" he asked bravely, raising his hands to lob ectoblasts at the intruder. Then he saw his hands; they were covered in blood.

Red, human blood.

The anger that had risen in his chest plummetted, the fire in his eyes faded, and forceful shakes overcame his body. _Oh God…oh God, oh God, oh God…_

The doors on the other side of the gym burst open. Jack and Maddie Fenton leapt into the room, suited up, weapons ready. The shock and rage on their faces dealt another devastating blow to the teenage hybrid.

Suddenly, Danny was on a motorcycle. Just as suddenly, a cannon-sized ectoblast originating from his mother's ecto-bazooka whizzed through the spot where his head just was. "Hang on," Johnny told him as they zapped out of sight and sped out of the school through the walls.

They jerked to a stop in the end zone of the football field, the motorcycle's wheels leaving ruts in the snow. Embarrassingly, Danny fell off almost immediately.

"Touchdown!" Johnny roared, formally dismounting his bike.

"What do you want, creep?" the ghost boy spit.

"Oh, just wanted to see what was bugging you so bad…" he explained cryptically, walking in a circle around a now sitting Danny.

"If you want to beat me up get to it. Unless my sister is possessing you for a change, I don't want to hear any psycho-babble-mumbo-jumbo."

I'm not here for anything concerning your sister. Shadow and I have just been hearing some rather disturbing things along the ghostly grapevine….or rather, Kitty has."

"If you have something to say, say it. If you don't have anything to say and you're not here to beat me up, I have schoolwork to do so…" Danny hauled himself to his feet and found himself face to face with Johnny.

"You look terrible, you know. Positively ill," he whispered, greasy orange hair and pale pimply complexion much too close to his face.

"Get. Out. Of. My. Face."

Johnny tilted his head to the side and squinted. His mouth opened, and his mouth closed. "I know what you did. I have to say, I'm shocked. But, you know, sometimes things get out of hand, people make mistakes…."

Danny raised a glowing, bloody hand and seethed, "I'm not in the _mood!"_

His last word came out much louder than it should have. In fact, it reverberated in the air around them and formed into a blast of its own. _Was that a mini-wail?_

Johnny stumbled backward and nearly fell. He exchanged a look with Shadow and climbed back on his motorcycle, revving the engine obnoxiously. Danny suddenly felt a milder version of the draining effect his ghostly wail always had on him. He bent over, placing his hands over his knees, and focused on breathing.

"By the way, stupid," the ghostly delinquent called as he prepared to leave, "I thought you might want your lunch back." Danny looked up just in time to see him pull a metal cylinder out of his jacket and toss it on the ground in front of him. "Later."

White rings encircled Danny once more as he zoomed away. _The thermos. Johnny had a Fenton thermos?_ It didn't make any sense for a ghost who didn't want to catch a ghost to go out of his way to steal a ghost-catching device. Unless that was part of the fun. Maybe when opened the thermos released a fanged, kraken-sized iguana or something.

He heard people coming. His friends hopefully, his parents probably, and who knows who else. With any luck they hadn't seen anything they shouldn't have, but at this point Danny was too tired to care very much. Part of him considered phasing and sneaking away invisibly, but he was too tired to do that either.

So he sat. Sat in the snow drift and waited for people to come and make their own assumptions.

Sam and Tucker descended upon him first. _Is there a word for a cross between relief and anger?_ he wondered idly.

"Are you hurt?" Sam asked, "You're bleeding."

Danny brought a hand up to his nose. _Yeah, I am bleeding._

Cold water met the hand on his lap. When his other hand automatically reached for the first hand, it got a splash too. He looked up at Tucker, confused.

The techno-geek was putting the cap back on Sam's water bottle. "The blood, dude, you gotta wash off the blood."

He looked at his hands again and began halfheartedly rubbing them together in a scrubbing-motion.

His parents were there next. He could feel his mother's hands, feeling his head for a fever, raising a tissue to his nose, patting his back. He could hear his father's voice, asking if he saw the ghost, if he fought the ghost, where the ghost went.

When the teachers showed up he snapped out of it. Tentatively, he willed himself to his feet, clutching the thermos in one hand. His muscles protested, but eventually complied.

"Oh, Danny!" his mother cried, quick to grab his elbow in an effort to help him stabilize himself, "Here, let me help you to the Ghost Assault Vehicle."

Still, woozy, the teeanger shook his head. Sam was here; he needed to figure out why she'd skipped first hour. And he had to tell them both about what happened with Plasmius last night.

 _Was that really just last night?_

It felt like it couldn't have been just last night. It felt like at least a week had somehow passed in the interim, and it left him spinning.

"I'm okay, really," he deadpanned weakly.

"Did that ghost do something to you, Danny-boy?" his father asked, ectogun still in hand.

"I think we should scan him for ecto-contamination," Maddie suggested, voice laden with concern for the well-being of her only son.

"No!" he protested too loudly, "I'm fine. Perfectly fine. A-okay, really!"

Neither ghost hunter looked convinced.

"I was just, um, uh, taking a walk to get some fresh air when I saw that ghost. That ghost on the motorcycle. The one with the shadow. And, uh, he, uh, went by really fast. I tried to chase after him and lost my footing." Danny was rambling now, and gesturing wildly with the thermos. He knew that he was, he just couldn't stop himself. His mother eyed the thermos and seemed touched; it really was a very convenient prop. Encouraged, Danny continued. "Yeah, I fell over. I'm just a little dazed. I think my headache is back. Maybe the stomach ache too. Didn't eat much today either. Blood sugar's probably low, I should go inside." For effect, he stretched a toothy smile across his face. It came out forced. He waited.

Silence. Awkward silence.

"We'll help him back to school, Mrs. Fenton," Tucker promised hastily, "We've got a math test next hour, he really can't miss it."

She didn't look convinced. After exchanging a brief look with her husband, she sighed. "Alright. But, if you feel too sick, call the house. Jazz should be there, she'll come get you. I'm afraid we're going to be pretty busy today."

She had to go. Had to go catch Phantom, had to catch the killer. And she didn't even know she had him by his elbow that very moment.

Danny was simultaneously terrified and longing. He desperately wanted the comfort of a mother, of his mother. He wanted to confess everything to her, then he wanted her to hug him and tell him that it was all going to be okay. That he'd done nothing wrong, that it wasn't his fault. But he had done something wrong and it was indeed his fault. If she only knew….she could never know. After what happened in the gym, he could never tell her now.

 _Mama...just killed a man._

 _Put a gun against his head,_

 _Pulled my trigger now he's dead…._

In his mind he could see her face. Shock initially, confusion. Then dark understanding. Hurt. Betrayal. Anger. No, he could never do it.

Tucker and Sam stood on either side of him now, slightly in front of him like they were trying to hide an expensive vase they'd shattered from their parents. And he was the broken pottery.

"Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, but if young Daniel here is quite alright, I'd like to know how your security system allowed for such a breach," the principal inquired indignantly.

His parent's turned to answer the query, giving the trio the perfect opportunity to scuttle off back towards the school.

"Dude, what happened?" Tucker asked in a hushed voice.

"You saw most of it," he relayed gruffly, "The entire disaster."

"We didn't even reach the gym til you were already gone," Sam imparted, irritated, "We heard everybody talking about blood on Phantom's hand, and we were obviously very concerned for your ungrateful ass."

"You're lucky we put two and two together, too," Tuck elaborated, "And got to you before your parents."

"Can you spell the word, 'Disaster,' Danny? Or maybe you want me to use it in a sentence?" Sam snapped, "Would country of origin help? What can we do to make you get this through your thick skull?"

It started snowing lightly. Danny wiped his nose on his wrist and examined his friends. "You guys must be freezing," he commented. They'd come out without their coats.

"Thanks for noticing, we _appreciate_ your concern," Sam seethed, tiny white flakes settling on her face and in her hair.

"I got in there, got ready to fight, and realized my nosebleed had gotten all over my hands." He sighed. It wasn't as if he hadn't known from previous experience that his blood, once outside his body, did not undergo the transformation with the rest of him. "Next thing I knew, Johnny had me on his motorcycle. Then we were out there, and he was talking in circles. Soon people were coming, so he pulled out this thermos, lobbed it at me, and took off."

Sam stopped abruptly and snatched the thermos out of his hands.

"I know what you're thinking, you'd probably like to keep me in there for a few hours, but we really do have a math test in a few minutes."

"Guys, you know how I had that thermos? The one with Spectra and Bertrand in it?"

The two boys nodded.

"That thermos disappeared last night. My parents dragged me downstairs for a yelling match, and when I came back it was gone."

Tucker's eyebrows scrunched together. "So, you think…."

The three teens eyed the thermos suspiciously. If this truly was the thermos that contained Spectra and Bertrand, Danny had a mind to set it on fire.

"So Johnny stole it from you last night, only to give it to me this morning?"

"I didn't say it made sense. It'd just be an awful coincidence, right? One thermos disappears, then some ghost, a ghost who isn't exactly known for critical thinking, steals a random one for the exclusive purpose of giving it to you?"

None of them noticed Lancer walk up behind them.

"What in _Jane Eyre'_ s name are you three still doing out here? Did any of you bring coats to school today, by chance?"

"We'll be right in," Tucker chimed.

The middle-aged teacher shook his head, deciding it would be easier and better for everyone if he didn't argue. Away he walked. The trio followed after.

"Plasmius showed up at my house last night."

They stopped again.

"What?"

Though he'd brought it up, Danny suddenly didn't want to talk about it. "It's not a big deal. Just his normal crap."

"This hasn't been a very normal week, I highly doubt it could be just his normal crap," Sam snorted.

"He wanted to help," the ghost boy sighed calmly, "For a fee, obviously."

"A fee? Really?"

"An undisclosed fee," he continued, beginning to walk slowly forward, "And I had absolutely no choice in the matter, of course." He was beginning to feel like he'd never have a choice again.

His throat closed up a bit. He'd never in his life felt so boxed in, so trapped, and he'd been trapped a lot of times before. He'd even been forced to do things under the sway of mind control. This time, though, he'd confined himself. He'd walked recklessly into a corner, only to find that the walls were closing up around him. And no matter what he did, he couldn't stop them. No choice seemed at all viable other than the option to sit and calmly await doom.

His friends tried to coax answers out of him, but he remained quiet as they walked into the school. Second hour was coming to a close, and now Danny had a math test to worry about. A freaking math test.

All three of them were taking Statistics; Calculus was out of the question, and a senior math class was required by the state. Danny had actually been doing pretty well too, pulling low B's instead of his usual low D's. And it was making the teacher pretty mad too.

Quietly, Sam, Danny, and Tucker sat down in their regular seats. Much less quietly, the rest of the class filed in around them.

"All the blood—"

"Just gross—"

"Where do you think it came from?"

"Can't believe they haven't canceled classes!"

"We're obviously not safe…."

"I hope everyone has their calculators," the teacher rasped in his nasally voice, interrupting the numerous discussions going on around the classroom, "They'll come in pretty handy on the second portion of the test."

Danny didn't have his calculator. It was either in his backpack in the library or on his bedroom floor at home. And honestly he didn't have the energy to look for it.

"Mr. Fenton," he sighed, "Do you or do you not have your calculator?"

Staring down at his empty desk, he shook his head.

"No pencil either, hmm?"

Something was poking his back. Tucker stuck a spare pencil over his shoulder, and he took it without a word.

The old man lost interest in patronizing him then. "Alright, class, put everything but your calculators and your pencils under your desks. You may begin as soon as you get your test."

Eventually a paper packet landed on Danny's desk. Slowly, tiredly, he signed his name and tried to muster up the will to focus.

 _Stem and leaf plot….stem and leaf plot…_

What on Earth was a stem and leaf plot?

The entire test went basically just like that. Some concepts he had vague recollections of, others could have been brand new. Despondently, he jotted down what he could.

Finally, staring at what he could have deemed the finished product, he felt the urge to cry. Or leave. Or cry and leave.

No. He'd worked too hard to give up. He'd worked so, damned hard. He wanted to be proud of himself, he wanted to know that he was doing well. At the end of the day he wanted to be able to pat himself on the back and not have to scrape the bottom of the self-esteem barrel in search of something, anything. At the end of the school year he wanted to receive his diploma with a smile. A hopeful smile.

And he'd known for a while that that was unlikely.

This was just the nail in the coffin.

 _Mama…_

 _Life had just begun._

 _And now I've gone and thrown it all_

 _Away…_

 **Author's Note: Hey, everyone! Sorry for the wait. I've been pretty busy lately, but here you go, another chapter. Hope you enjoyed it.**


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

The rest of the day passed in a mechanical haze for Danny. He arrived at class on time with the proper materials, sat quietly, and mindlessly did whatever busy work was assigned, then left. Pretended no one was whispering. Pretended Sam and Tuck weren't constantly staring at him. Repeat. Lunch. Repeat, repeat.

"I'm thinking maybe you should check out early, man," Tucker commented almost offhandedly as the second to last class of the day wrapped up.

Going home early sounded like more work to the weary teen. In the event that his parents were home rather than tracking him, he'd have to talk to them, at least briefly. He'd have to sign out at the office, get make up work. Sitting through another class would be, well, not cake, but some sort of mildly palletable bread after the morning he'd had.

"I think he's right," Sam agreed sheepishly, "You're awfully pale."

"Pale," Danny humphed, "That's new."

The bell rang, and everyone in the class stood to rush out. The trio followed the pack out into the hallway, though they took a more roundabout route to their lockers than the rest.

"Really, it wouldn't be hard," Tuck continued, "I'm sure you can slip right out the front door. Or the side door. Pick a wall. Anywhere, really."

"Anywhere at all!" Sam emphasized, "You could phase out right now. Head home, take a nap; you need it. We'll cover for you, everyone knows you're not feeling well."

Danny eyed them speculatively. They'd been quiet and nervous all day, he'd just assumed it was more out of anxiety than pretense. "Do you guys know something I don't?"

Just then, a voice came over the intercom, solemn and strict. "All students shall report to the auditorium now for the scheduled memorial assembly. We begin in five minutes."

A curse slipped through Sam's lips, and a chill fell upon the largely vacant section of hall they occupied. Danny's eyes glowed for several seconds, then died back down to their now normal empty blue.

"That answers that question then," he sighed vacantly. The ghost boy felt as if all the blood in his heart had been replaced by liquid nitrogen, spreading chill numbness from his chest through every vein in his body to every isolated corner. A brief shiver overcame him, and his legs wobbled.

Sam, seeing his sudden physical distress, hurried to explain. "We're sorry, Danny, they announced it after you stepped out this morning, and we just didn't want to worry you!"

"Hey, it's not too late," Tucker chimed, strained, "Just pop out of sight and adios!"

"Misters Foley and Fenton. Miss Manson. I expect you three have a good explanation for why you are dawdling in this manner when there's an assembly to attend."

"Hey, Mr. Lancer!" Tuck exclaimed, "We were just, uh, navigating."

"Really? You've been at this school for four years now and you still don't know where the auditorium is?"

The tech geek shrugged with a flounce. "What can we say? We were never really involved in the theatre much, and hallways are so confusing you know..."

A deep sigh escaped the middle-aged man's mouth as he put a hand on the bridge of his nose. "This way then," he instructed, exhaustion coloring his tone.

"Mr. Lancer," Sam began, "Danny's not really feeling well, so maybe he could be excused…."

"He can have a seat by the door, but all students have to go."

When they reached the auditorium, nearly all the seats were already filled. Thick crimson curtains were drawn around the elevated wooden stage. The matching, dingy seats were divided into three ailses, a left, a right, and a center. Everyone else already knew this was happening, and they were probably excited to participate in the mourning drama.

A pitiful soundtrack of whispers, sniffles, and even one or two bouts of louder weeping filled Danny's ears and grated inside his brain. _Did any of these people even know Mr. Baker?_

Well, he wasn't one to criticize. He hadn't known him either, really.

Bam. A headache. Just what he needed.

They did get the seats right next to the door on the right side though. Danny was on the very edge of the aisle (in case he needed to flee to the bathroom for vomiting purposes—y'know, with his stomach flu and all that). Lancer sat right next to him, driving a wedge between he and Sam, who got to sit next to Tucker. Other than them, the row was empty. That was a blessing, he supposed. Fewer people to witness his oncoming emotional breakdown.

They hadn't been seated thirty seconds when stirring music burst out from the band area in front of the stage. It was some song he didn't recognize but had come to associate with funerals, slow and melodic, sad and inspired. Not that he'd been to many funerals, which might have been ironic if the entire situation wasn't so messed up.

 _When did they even learn this song?_ Danny thought painfully.

Sniffles accompanied the stirring strings, and his stomach burned. His throat restricted, and he thought that maybe he could just quietly choke to death. Easiest way out, perfect plan!

The curtains reeled open and the principal stepped on stage. Danny quickly diverted all of his efforts into ignoring everything he said. He stared at the walls, stared at his lap. Stared at a kid a few rows up who was having a really bad hair day. Stared at the ceiling, stared at the floor. None of these distracted him in the least.

Hadn't he memorized the Gettysburg address once? Maybe if he recited that over and over again in his head with enough focus….nope, that wouldn't help. Periodic table? Something about the moon and a glove from Romeo and Juliet? He had to remember something, right?

Everything in his head was jumbled, but his auditory sensors refused to shut down.

Yes, he knew why he was there.

Yes, he knew what had happened.

Yes he knew it was a tragedy, yes he knew they'd lost a "valued member" of the school community, yes he knew many people were very upset about it.

No, he didn't think he wanted to talk to anybody about it. Apparently they'd had trouble finding a grief counselor to help, or even just a new school counselor on such short notice. No one wants to take a job where the last guy dropped dead from a spectrally dealt head injury just outside his office. So who were his options?

Parents? They'd kill him.

Teachers? They'd hand him to his parents!

Friends. Well...didn't they hate him enough already?

Then a projector flickered to life. His stomach rolled over and the room swayed as the principal introduced a slide show of the man's life, to be accompanied by a special performance from the band.

Initially he closed his eyes. Judging by the resounding "aw"s, they'd started right at the beginning. Baby pictures.

And he just couldn't look.

He just couldn't look!

Just couldn't look….

Couldn't look….

Look?

He knew that he should. He knew that it was only right. It was only just that he should pry open his eyelids and absorb every single picture they showed of that man whose life he had taken. Not out of malice, of sheer carelessness, but taken just the same….

David Baker. Did he have a middle name?

He wondered briefly why his parents had chosen that name. Had they called him Davy when he was little? Dave? Or was it always David?

Lord, his parents. He couldn't think about his parents.

He wondered if they'd had only one child on purpose. Maybe they just wanted one, maybe they couldn't have any more. Maybe he'd had siblings, maybe they'd died too.

Panic rose in his chest and his heart rate sped up. What would it be like to be a parent then to suddenly not be a parent anymore? Call yourself one for years and years then suddenly your identity...gone. Everything you'd worked for, over. He'd seen it happen in a movie once, thought to himself he'd always want more than one, just in case. It seemed callous, regarding kids as eggs in baskets, but people were fragile, eggs were fragile. It made sense.

 _Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall._

 _Humpty Dumpty had a great fall._

 _All the king's horses and all the king's men_

 _Couldn't put Humpty together again._

In middle school they liked to make fun of nursery rhymes. Sometimes it was suggested Humpty was pushed, sometimes people would remind each other that the rhyme never said Humpty was and egg.

He remembered Baker on the floor. He remembered his head, a trickle of blood…

Panic panic panic panic…

"Mr. Fenton," he heard Lancer whisper, "Are you okay? Do you need a toilet?"

Frantically he shook his head. He had to stay, he had to look….

So he opened his eyes. A pre-teen Baker on a bike met his eye, and he'd barely registered the bright red helmet before the picture switched.

First day at middle school. A short blond boy with a toothy grin smiled at the camera with a _Star Wars_ backpack in hand.

Hanging with friends. Maybe marathoning movies or something; these clearly weren't the sport types.

First dance. Light blue suit with a bright white tie, standing two feet from a girl in a pink frilly dress under a baloon arch.

School picture. Braces, glasses, acne. Poor thing.

The images flipped on and on, each one searing itself into Danny's brain until he felt like a hemorrhaging lump of burnt up, rotten flesh.

Ew.

At his thirteenth birthday party tears finally forced their way through Danny's facade. Baker died at 27, this was very nearly the halfway point of his life.

Danny remembered himself at thirteen. Friends and family and hope. His parents were still considered nutty, largely harmless and nutty. He still might've been an astronaut, might've been a positive force in the world. Might've graduated high school, might've done a million good things.

Life felt so long at thirteen, back before ghost invasions, hiding, and exhaustion were his life. He was thirteen, then he was fourteen and everything changed. It was all downhill from there.

Why did all of that feel over now? Life wasn't over. Not for him anyway.

It is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker, it is for David Baker….

In the midst of his mantra, he barely heard the ancient auditorium doors right next to him creak quietly open. A woman he'd never seen before came in, looking around for a seat, clutching her purse like it was a lifeline. Most people were so engrossed with the slideshow they didn't even notice her.

They probably all knew about him now, knew about what he did. How could they think otherwise after all that had happened, even imagine that he could have an excuse after seeing all this?

He felt Lancer give a sharp tug to his sweatshirt sleeve and gathered that he wanted everyone to move to the side a seat. Since he, Lancer, Sam, and Tuck were the only people in the very back row it didn't cause any commotion and let the woman be seated immediately.

He noted her limp brown hair that reached down to her shoulders and her dark attire. She looked too old to be a student; maybe she was a parent or something, he wasn't sure. Gasping quietly when she set eyes on the screen, she pulled a used tissue out of a pocket in her purse.

Great. She was one of the snifflers.

Everything went faster after that. At least, Danny felt like everything went faster after that.

First day of high school. His braces were off.

Prom. Different girl, purple dress this time.

High school graduation. Yellow robes, stupid hat.

First day of college. Group picture, unfamiliar faces.

Someone vaguely familiar in the background tightened his throat even further.

A date with a girl.

He tensed up and drew within himself, holding his arms tightly crossed to his chest.

College graduation.

He began breathing shallowly and quickly, panicking panicking panicking again.

A wedding.

He nearly passed out.

Of all the dumb luck in the world…. Of all the stupid, dumb, hideous luck in this sphere and the next, why? Hadn't fate been cruel enough to him this week? Could it maybe stop making this situation worse and worse and nothing else?

His whole self was on fire. His breathing hitched and he did everything he could to restrict a stomach full of blubbery apologies from spewing out of his mouth like sewage.

Then again, what fitting punishment. It was about time he met Mrs. Baker.

Kiersten , maybe? Christine? He wasn't sure, and that made it worse.

How he wanted to run away, but he was frozen. Frozen in fear and sorrow and self-hatred he sat as the very last pictures skipped too slowly by.

There was this year's Christmas card, featuring a happy man and a happy woman in a cartoonish winter wonderland, then, in white calligraphy on a black background, the screen read, "RIP David Baker," then, "We miss you!"

A pained sob wracked Danny's chest, and clutched his face, wet with tears, in his hands.

Then a gentle hand prodded his shoulder.

He rose his head slowly, judging by the direction who must be doing the nudging. He didn't want to meet her eyes, didn't want to really see her face, once so happy, now grief-stricken. Because of him.

But he did meet her eyes. And he did see her face.

A tissue. She was handing him a tissue. His eyes momentarily flicked down to her other hand, gripping a now empty pocket tissue packet.

And he didn't think he'd ever run that fast in his life, leaving behind a chilled auditorium and a frosty, slippery floor.

He heard Lancer excuse him before he was even out the door. "Sorry, he's been ill..."

Come to think of it, his flight from the auditorium might not have been entirely natural. Or maybe desperate guilt gives a person super speed, he wasn't sure. Either way he was out of there.

All he wanted was to find a hole—dig one if he had to—lie down in it, pull the dirt over himself, and never leave.

Maybe he'd dream in the hole. Maybe he'd dream and in the dream all this would be a nightmare. And he'd dream-know that in that dream-world that Mr. and Mrs. Baker were off having a perfectly happy life, completely unviolated by him.

He pictured a baby, small and chubby and smiling. A happy baby Baker, whose parents assumed he would give them grandchildren. He pictured him at just fourteen, not knowing that he had already experienced half of all he would experience. He pictured Baker as he looked less than 48 hours ago.

As he jogged toward the front door, not wanting to risk excessive use of ghost energy thus activating any sensors, he heard his friends coming up behind him.

"Danny, wait!"

"Dude, stop for a sec!"

And he did stop. Right in front of that fateful locker.

Maybe he'd made his way there subconsciously, maybe he didn't. But he felt that he deserved to see it, was compelled to see it. Subtle dent. Cleaner floor. Empty office.

It was easy to forget that this whole thing had happened just this Sunday night. A Monday and part of a Tuesday were all that separated a man from his life. It had been a Monday and part of a Tuesday since Danny had been able to breathe without aching. Kristina (?) Baker had been a widow for all of Monday and part of Tuesday.

That hole was starting to sound like a good idea.

Yet, he'd forgotten his post-hole digger at home. Darn.

He sprinted out of school before Sam or Tuck could catch up. He couldn't stand to be consoled, he didn't deserve it.

Did he dare phase and fly home? As awful as he felt, he still didn't feel like being zapped to death today, even if he did deserve it. Better to walk.

Too conspicuous. Maybe walk invisibly? Usually that would be a lot of work in his human form, but his powers had been incredibly volatile lately. If he was so super-powered, maybe he could sustain that without crossing over and excessively risking detection.

Crossing over—get it?

He couldn't get to his bed soon enough, and his perception of time aided him in this effort at least. The world felt like it was turning faster, everything was swaying, swirling, and before long he fell right into bed.

…

Two stories below Danny's bedroom, Jack and Maddie were putting the finishing touches on their weapon.

It would have been done already if they hadn't received that distress call from the school. They would have been naive, though, to assume that all ghost attacks would stop for them to handle this disaster. In fact, they considered themselves lucky that the town hadn't descended into mayhem after the incident.

The ghosts could have very easily seen Phantom's actions, the actions of someone who was clearly their superior and in some ways had been their leader/boss/thing, then decided that there must be no rules any more. If there had ever been rules at all, anyway. That was the other side of the coin: they were extremely lucky it had taken even this long for a death to occur. It didn't feel lucky exactly, but still.

"If only we had a name for it…." Jack exclaimed for the fourth time, a pencil scribbling wildly in his meaty hand as Maddie worked on the final calibrations.

Check the sensors.

"Fenton Ghost Annihilator….no…"

Tighten the screws.

"Fenton Ghost De-power-er!"

Get new ecto-batteries out of drawer.

"No, that's stupid…."

Test stability of ecto-batteries.

"Fenton Ghost Deenergizer? Sounds like a sports drink…"

Both Fentons were exhausted. Their eyes rested on purple clouds and it was getting hard to think, but ghosts didn't sleep. And ghosts were the enemy. If the enemy isn't sleeping, if the enemy is as unpredictable as it has just proven itself to be, then the last thing the heroes of the story should do is sleep when there was work to be done.

"It's alright if it doesn't have a name, Jack," Maddie sighed, slipping the ecto-batteries into their designated slots.

"Fenton Ghost Keeler-over-er….Fenton Ghost Eradicator….Fenton Ghost Killer? No, no, they're already dead…."

The gun was mammoth. Shiny, metallic, and silver, it matched their arsenal well, but it was a step beyond their best portable weapon yet. Light enough to lift and carry around in combat, yet big enough to pack enough power to (hopefully) disable Phantom.

"I got it!" Jack shouted, sending his pencil whirling through the air, "The Fenton Finisher!"

"The Fenton _Ghost_ Finisher, sweetie."

"Hmm," the man contemplated, "Hasn't got quite the ring to it, but—" He looked down at the paper, checking over his options before continuing. "But I like it!"

"I just hope it's accurate," his wife breathed, rubbing her eyes sleepily, "Either way, it's ready."

"You want to bring it up to the GAV right now?" he suggested, "We could start patrolling, Phantom looks for other ghosts, if we find any we find him…"

"We need our sleep, I think," she refuted, "Aim is pretty important with these things."

"You're right, who knows what this would do to a person!"

Most of their weapons just spewed harmless goo at human beings, but this...this one worked a bit differently.

"I don't really want to find out, actually. With any luck, we won't need to bring it out of the house after tonight." Maddie wanted this fight done already; Phantom was a powerful opponent, and she did not want to tangle with him. But he had brought his on himself. She had no choice anymore.

Before settling in for a nap, Maddie wanted to see her son. _School might've ended early_ , she thought, _what with the assembly and all._ She just couldn't see the teachers keeping kids after that debacle. She'd wanted to be their of course, to show some strength, to show that the ghost hunters of the town were active. But being active doesn't mean standing around listening to weepy teenagers or looking cool with a bazooka.

Her little Danny was sound asleep in bed, tucked into a ball under his covers like she'd seen him do so many times. Poor thing still wasn't well. Hopefully she and Jack could spend more time nursing him after they got this whole Phantom thing figured out.

"Good night," Maddie whispered softly, closing the door behind her, "Sweet dreams."

 **AN: Alright, there you go! Thanks for reading, following, favoriting, and reviewing. Next chapter we should really get into some action. Let me know what you think!**


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Danny awoke very suddenly, encompassed by an alarming falling sensation. A brief moment of terror later his back hit his bed and he was nearly bounced off the mattress onto the floor of his bedroom. He looked up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. There was no one there, at least no one he could see. His ghost sense wasn't going off. _Had he been floating?_

It wouldn't surprise him if he had been floating just then in his sleep. His powers hadn't been this volatile since he was fourteen years old. Then again briefly when he discovered his ice powers, but even then it was only with the one thing. Now he was misfiring in all directions.

In a moment of dark humor, he imagined himself racing down a crowded hallway, shooting ecto-blasts everywhere, as GIW operatives chased after him with different bazookas firing off in all directions, screaming all the way. Was he screaming? Were they screaming? Everyone was screaming.

He wanted to scream for real. But that would wake his parents. If they were even home.

Not even thirty seconds after the exhausted teen made it quakily to his feet did a breath of wispy white escape his mouth.

A brief wave of confidence.

 _Finally, something he knew how to do! Knew that he could do._

Freezing panic.

 _Couldn't do. Wasn't safe, wasn't safe for him, wasn't safe for anyone._

A roll of rage.

 _Can't do nothing!_

Inaction wasn't safe either. This was Danny's job, his purpose, and just about the only thing he could do with his pathetic life.

Why should he have to give that up after all that he'd sacrificed? After the years of neglecting himself and everything else he cared about, after hours upon hours upon hours of training and crying and victory and defeat. Why should he have to stop now?

Danny's cold, pale feet took him steadily to his window and he peered out. No ghosts in sight, which admittedly didn't mean much.

 _Can't change here,_ he thought to himself, some part of his mind still logical, _Mom and Dad will have this place sensored to the nines right now._

Or maybe not. Either way, he was very used to avoiding detection, and that logical part of his brain knew that he was taking a gigantic risk.

 _In doing his job. His only job._

This was a pretty neat window. Just a bit farther up from the floor than his bed, it reached to the ceiling and opened outward towards the street, usually letting in a cool breeze. Of course, he hadn't opened it since the start of winter….

Mind devoid of thought, his fingers fumbled to undo the locks. The house was deathly silent.

Mind devoid of thought, he threw the windows open. Frigid wind struck him immediately, blowing a few sheets of undone homework around the room.

Mind devoid of thought, he stepped up onto the brick window sill. The soles of his feet burned from cold, and his teeth began to chatter without him telling him to. And he wasn't usually very susceptible to the cold.

Mind bright white and empty, Danny jumped.

Though it was only the second story, it was a high, city-building second story. Danny had gotten over any fear of heights years ago, when he'd learned to fly. During all those fights, he'd also learned to fall.

But this was different.

A heartbeat later than he would have liked, two glowing rings formed around his waist, encompassing his entire body and allowing him to put a stopper on gravity.

As he floated to a stop two feet above the snowbanks, a worm of doubt popped up from the back corner of what was left of his brain. His powers had been very unreliable lately; if they could do things without his direct will, could they stop doing things without his direct will? Stop doing things like defying gravity perhaps?

His ghost form could take it at least. He was as sure about that as he was about anything these days.

With an unnecessary gulp of familiar air, he flew comfortably into the space above his snowy street.

The streetlamps were back on, their little bursts of light illuminating the surrounding white. The sky was clear, and the stars were out. God he loved the stars.

A sudden force struck him from behind, slamming his body into the exterior wall of his room, missing the still open window by three feet or so. For a few seconds he fell, clumsy fingers trying desperately to get a hold of the slippery powder which coated the wall in some areas, fear of falling preventing him from recalling his power of flight.

His body knew what his imagination did not, which was that if he could do anything he could fly. So he stopped mid air and whirled to face his opponent.

"Hello, whelp," a deep mechanical voice called from ten feet away.

Metallic skin shining, his flaming green hair drew attention away from the stars.

"Skulker," Danny grumbled, rubbing the shoulder that had taken the brunt of the damage, "Whatever happened to the Christmas spirit?"

"The twenty-fifth is still days away, Ghost Child. Don't your humans have calendars?"

"Well, we do, but that actually brings up an interesting question." Danny wasn't in the mood for fighting, and it showed. He was in the mood for sleeping, but apparently even that was a dangerous activity for him. "How do ghosts know when it's Christmas? Do you have calendars? Do you all subscribe to Christianity implicitly? Are there Jewish ghosts? Do they take breaks during Hanukkah? What about atheists ghosts, what do atheist ghosts—"

Skulker didn't share the anti-fighting sentiment. An enormous blast from a wrist-ray later, had Danny narrowly avoiding messing up his other shoulder.

"Ru-ude. Just trying to have a conversation is all, be friendly, that's it."

 _Blast blast blast blast blast_. Rapid double fire from both of his enemy's wrists had the hybrid doing acrobatics in the air. Up, down, left, up, right right right, up….

Spots. Dark gray spots began encroaching on his periphery and a dull ache was slowly filling his skull and saturating his brain.

His body swayed a little, and he decided it was time for a snide remark. "You're an awful dodgeball player. You know that, right? Not that I'm one to talk."

Then his slow reaction time bit him on the side of his hip. Burned, actually, rather than bit. His slow reaction time burned through his jumpsuit in the form of an ectoblast and scalded the skin left behind. This proved that there was indeed a difference between firepower and regular old force-power.

Thus he fell with an anticlimactic plop into a snow drift.

"You wouldn't know true combat if it _bit_ you in your ghostly core, you insolent little—"

"Highly unoriginal metaphor, Skulky, highly unoriginal," that insolent little whatever criticized from the ground, though he'd incorporated the saying into his own mental narrative only seconds before.

Before Danny could manage to regain his footing, Skulker was towering over him. "At least I can aim, anyway. And hit the correct target."

A lump rose in the teen's throat and his vision blurred in and out for a few seconds. Green orbs of power formed subconsciously around his clenched fists, burning through the nearby snow. Powered completely by rage and lack of rational thought, he raised them and lobbed them with as much force as he could muster toward the tiny-blob-robot-suit thingy that was mocking him.

More than mocking him himself, he was mocking the gravest mistake he'd ever made and all of the consequences that went along with it.

For that he would pay. Someone had to. _Someone had to pay._

Skulker hadn't expected him to react so quickly and was shoved back by the shots. Taking this opportunity in stride despite the physical weakness he felt, Danny skipped the standing step and leapt straight into the air, assuming a stance of power ten feet above his temporarily stunned opponent.

The robot ghost shook off a thin dusting of white and aimed at the airborne specter. "As difficult to hunt and catch as you've been, one would have thought you could learn the _spect_ acular consequences thoughtless ectoblasts can have—"

Danny launched another ectoblast at his metallic skull, wishing with all his might to pound him into the pavement of the road.

Unfortunately, he missed.

Skulker didn't make any attempt to dodge; he didn't move anymore than a fiery eyebrow. Danny simply missed. And swayed a little.

Hey, it had been an exhausting couple of days.

Skulker activated his jetpack and floated slowly upward until he was at eye level with the ghost boy, and even through the spots in his vision and the obvious brain injury he'd received, Danny thought he detected a look of stern concern.

This hint of pity, from a being that literally wanted nothing more than to skin him (alive, probably) and mount his pelt on his wall (shudder), multiplied the fury emanating from his core.

Suddenly his hands weren't the only things crackling in an ecto-electric cage of green. As instantaneous and as dangerous as lightning, random sparks shot out from his prepared orbs all over the place. Some bursts remained suspended in the air; others broke out too far from their source. Several window panels shattered, and at least one car parked on a curb started smoking.

Skulker, the only actual target in the vicinity, projected a shield in front of himself with a simple wave of his arm, remaining untouched.

"Look at yourself. You're out of sync, you're out of control. You're endangering those pathetic humans you say you care about by just being here. For all you know, those windows aren't the only thing that's broken right now."

Danny's body was shaking in mid-air, and electricity hissed in constant lightning-bolt bursts around him. His breathing had quickened rapidly, egging on the darkness devouring his sight.

"Everyone would be safer if you just came with me. You're an invalid, you're a disease, a _spect_ acle."

Faces flashed by in his mind's eye. Sam, Tucker, Jazz, Mom, Dad…. Mr. Baker. Sam's head smashing against unforgiving metal, Tucker still on the ground, Jazz bleeding out in a pool of her own blood…. Mr. Baker's widow.

 _Open your eyes,_

 _Look up to the skies and see…._

A bright wave of nausea and pain.

 _Crack!_

There was a brilliant flash of light and energy, then Danny was on the ground. His glow beamed more intensely than he had ever seen, though he had never felt so broken.

Just when he had decided to just stay where he was in the snow, a thought struck him: _Skulker's getting away._

So he rose to follow the bastard.

Standing was hard; flying was too easy. He felt like he'd set a new record for amount of energy drinks consumed in a limited amount of time, and that was saying something even if his only competition was himself.

At least some people must have been awakened by the commotion. He imagined himself as they would see him through their windows, a dazzling blur of black, white, and green. A dazzling, dangerous blur going way too fast.

Thus it was easy to catch up to Skulker. Thus it was simple to aim and child's play to encase him in ice and send him plummeting to the ground, smashing another innocent automobile.

Immediately Danny was dispirited. It really was a miracle no one had ever died as a result of his careless actions _before_ this week. It was a miracle that anyone at all had even survived his first week as a menace to society, let alone his first several years.

Then again he was weak then. He was more powerful now, that much was obvious. Maybe too powerful.

It was as if his sin had opened up a great door inside of him and activated a level of power exclusively for the most destructive and malicious.

Maybe Skulker was onto something. He was out of control, a spectacle, a disease. Maybe his core would take a hint and destabilize before he could do anything else wrong.

 _Disease_. _Spectacle_.

A new train of thought entered Danny's mind and suddenly he was replaying bits and pieces of what Skulker had actually said to him.

A disease, a spectacle. Spectacular consequences. Bit him in the ghostly core….

Skulker had gone out of his way to emphasize certain keywords. He'd also spent way less time than usual actually trying to capture the hybrid. Though he'd dealt a good beating, his taunting game was his real focus.

Johnny had been acting oddly too. He'd said something about bugs, called him ill for sure, then given him a Fenton thermos that still needed to be investigated.

Maybe they were trying to tell him something.

The whole thing felt ridiculous, and he felt like he needed a pencil and paper; it was way too late at night/early in the morning for all of this inference crap. Danny was known for his slacking off and his truancy, not his skill in discerning nuance and making connections.

Bugging him.

Bit him in the ghostly core.

Ill, disease, ill, diseased….

Spectacle, Spectacular, Spectra!

The epiphany broke him out of his introspection, drawing his attention to the outer world. A small crowd had gathered, alerted by noise that just a few nights ago wouldn't even have phased them. The citizens of Amity Park were used to ghost attacks. They had grown used to shots and bad puns being fired off snap snap back and forth. Phantom and/or Fentons vs. random ghost of the hour was a regular old show that was practically permanently set on reruns at this point.

Now it was different. They must have been scared, but not too scared. After all, they'd left the vague comfort and safety of their beds to observe, so their terror-meter wasn't full yet.

But they were wary.

Danny himself had to admit that he'd gotten used to seeing gratitude in the eyes of the populace. He'd adjusted to being in the spotlight in a positive way, he'd come to enjoy it. Now those eyes were wary, wary of him, and he didn't know what to do.

So he froze.

And that was a bad idea.

He heard the familiar screech before anyone could truly register it. Once the gawkers identified it, they collaborated to clear a path in the street faster than anyone would have thought possible, leaving their maybe-hero/maybe-villain alone.

The Ghost Assault Vehicle was coming, and it sounded like Jack was driving.

When some kids snuck out of their rooms in the dead of night, their parents dragged them home by the ear. Danny had bigger concerns.

As the weaponized family vehicle came into view, his instincts kicked in a little. Not a lot; just a little. His now unpredictable body managed to let him take a few steps backward, though neither his eyes nor his memories clued him into the fact that there was a giant hunk of ice/robo-ghost behind him. So he merely fell. Like a doofus.

Before he could regain his footing, he heard to sets of rushed footsteps clomping through the snow in his direction.

"I've got 'im, Maddie!"

Standing up, turning invisible, or even phasing away sounded like too much work. Something in his chest was pulsing deeply and erratically, simultaneously consuming and expelling energy. He was too hot.

He felt like he was choking, melting and asphyxiating on the inside when he knew that was impossible. He wanted to wretch, he wanted to run, he wanted to disappear. All he could manage to do was drag himself a few feet farther away through the blissfully frigid ice powder.

 _Maybe I just won't get away this time,_ he thought, _Maybe Skulker's right. Maybe it's for the best…_

Then they were on him.

 _What would happen if they killed me?_ For he was pretty sure he could be killed. It was a valid question. Would he just be still and gone? Would he melt away into green mush? What if he phased back into human form, right in front of them, their son back and deader than ever?

They wouldn't understand. They'd be angry and confused and hopefully at least a little sad. Then they'd realize what that meant, what that meant their little Danny boy had done. Then they'd just be mad, they'd hate him, they'd hate everyone who had helped him. He couldn't leave them like that.

God, his chest was burning pulsing burning pulsing. A slimy, heavy monster wanted out.

They were on top of him then. One on either side. He couldn't see their faces, for the only light in the scene came from empty windows, sad streetlamps, and ready weapons. The shadows transformed them; these weren't the loving, smiling faces that tucked him in at night or kissed his boo-boos when he was small. These shrouded eyes had never offered him reassurance, those gloved hands had never held him while he cried.

 _I'm just a_

 _Poor boy._

 _I need no_

 _Sympathy._

It didn't look like he'd have much of a choice about leaving them. Jazz had spent plenty of time when he was bedridden telling him about how she was sure they'd wait and ask questions first. He'd smiled and nodded, pretending to believe his sister when deep in his soul he knew that they would never stop. It wasn't in their nature.

 _'Cause I'm easy come, easy go,_

 _Little high, little low._

The bond between parent and child was supposed to change around this age. By all rights, they should be sending their baby boy all grown up off to college in a few months. They'd probably known that wasn't going to happen for a while now; he'd been watching them slowly lose faith in his future for years now. They knew that he was a bad student, a bad son. They probably knew he had no future even before he did himself.

 _Any way the wind blows_

 _Doesn't really matter to me..._

With this knowledge now at the forefront of his mind, Danny used one arm to tuck his legs up against his chest and raised a feeble hand as if (impossibly) to defend his face and—

 _To me._

Waited.

How could one describe pure agony? A level of pain so acute one does not have the mental capacity to wonder whether they are freezing or burning? A state of torment where everything except the pain becomes completely and irrevocably irrelevant—one's location, one's tormentor, one's own salvation, one's own self. How could anyone who has not experienced it fathom the sensation which is the world's hottest flame devouring each molecule of one's brain and body somehow singularly and simultaneously?

And how could anyone undergoing it think that anything could be worth enduring it for?

Danny could have been in a deserted desert or the farthest corner of the ever growing universe. He could have been alive, he could have been dead, but he couldn't tell. He would have said anything, done anything, promised anything at all in the world if there was the slightest possibility that it could have lessened his anguish in the slightest.

 _Nothing really matters,_

But he couldn't so much as think, let alone move or speak.

Everyone else could move, and everyone else could speak. And everyone else was torn.

It had been mere seconds since one of Amity's proudest ghost hunters pulled a trigger for nearly the first time. Out of the newest weapon in their arsenal came a beautiful spotlight. They saw all of the colors swirling in that ray; in that moment it was the purest, brightest rainbow in existence. Men, women, children—all were in awe at the sight of that glittering beam.

 _Anyone can see…._

Which is what made the scream sound so out of place.

 _Nothing really matters…._

So while everyone stared, they covered their ears. Covered their ears and for one second couldn't imagine that what was happening could be happening.

 _Nothing really matters…._

The beam slowly shifted in angle as the wail seemed to slowly push the ghost hunters away. Two pairs of black boots dug into the ground in an attempt to stay stationary, and gradually it got easier. Until the screaming stopped completely.

 _To me…_

Seconds after that, the beam faded. And the Fentons approached to examine their work. Before they could even get close enough to use any of their detectors, a particular set of eyes in the crowd was scrutinizing his fellows' reactions. After several moments of deliberation, he drew the conclusion that no one among all those people was willing to step out of line and do something.

Phantom may have looked pretty guilty lately, but Dash Baxter was nothing if not consistent. As a very consistent person, he believed in consistency as a universal thing, even among ghosts. From the bits and pieces he'd gathered from his tutoring sessions with Jazz Fenton, they weren't that different from everybody else. Except Phantom; he was different from everyone in that he stood up for the greater good.

Now he needed someone to stand up for him.

So Dash took a gamble in that moment. If this didn't go well, if the Fentons kicked his ass or if Phantom flipped out unexpectedly, he'd be labeled as a stupid pansy. A million things could go wrong, but in that moment he believed that nearly anything was better than letting these, these people just cart away his hero like he was just any ecto-scum from off the street.

So, still in his PJs, he jogged forward. "Hey!" he called, losing a slipper in the snow, "Wait a second!"

The Fentons stopped right in front of the still, smoking figure on the ground and looked up at him.

As soon as they recognized the odd man out, several nearby members of the football team were on alert. The crowd was growing exponentially, and the whispers by now had become quite the roar.

"Step back, son, this is official city business," Jack Fenton warned solemnly, "We still have no idea about the contamination level these remains—"

Dash's eyes widened in shock. "Remains!?" he shouted, stopping momentarily, "What do you mean remains?"

Everyone who heard that suddenly felt ten degrees colder.

"Remains, ghosts don't have…."

"Holy shit holy shit holy shit…."

"Mommy, where'd Phantom go?"

Words words words words words. Disbelief slowly rose into panic which was quickly heading into hysteria territory. Only the Fenton's vague comment on 'contamination levels' kept anyone at bay.

"Let me through! Goddammit, let me through!" Jazz Fenton was somehow squeezing her way through the crowd, making room only via aggressive shoves, not caring who she hit. Flanking her on either side were Sam and Tucker, who, living farther away from the scene, had met outside the still-growing crowd.

As the news traveled through the throngs, the words words words got louder and louder, turning into shouts of dismay and confusion, demanding answers, telling others to calm down.

When Jazz broke through to the clearing in the middle of the street, eyes locked on Danny, she broke into a dead sprint toward her family. Her entire, little family.

"Sweetie?" Maddie called out, confused. The sight of her mother (Danny's mother too— Danny's own mother), standing that way, armed over his tiny-looking limp body, shook her to her core. Sobs she hadn't noticed before increased in volume and frequency as she stopped short.

Red hair tangled and loose, pink nightgown covered only by an inside-out sweater, Jazz stood ankle-deep in white and stared at her mother. She'd hardly delayed leaving the house long enough to throw on a cardigan and a pair of too-big tennis shoes (Danny's shoes—they'd been lying both hazardously and conveniently near the doorway). When she'd heard all of the commotion, she'd known it'd have something to do with Danny. When she'd checked and seen the thrown open window and no little brother, she hadn't felt like she had time.

Now, as tiny flecks of snow began to fall and mix with the tears on her face, she wished she'd stayed in bed.

"Stay there, Jazzerincess," her father warned her, his usually carefree voice stiff. Her father was ignorant to many things, but he was not ignorant to the dangers posed by a mob and/or 'ecto-contamination.' "It's dangerous."

The situation was so awfully ironic that Jazz could have laughed. She settled for swaying and nearly falling over.

Sam and Tucker arrived in time to catch her by the elbows, but no one in the group had the will to go any closer. From their position, their best friend/brother could have been anyone. Between the shadows and the snow, it was impossible to discern anything about his condition other than that he wasn't moving.

And that was awful enough.

Several jock types had gathered around their ringleader and stood in a separate group facing the Fenton parents. No one seemed to quite know what to do. Everyone, with the exception of parents attempting to remove distraught children from the scene, simply stared at the body on the ground.

Until the body stirred. Then everyone went crazy.

Jazz, Sam, and Tucker took that as their cue to sprint to Danny's aid, and everybody else took their sprint as a cue that it was safe to converge. Everyone wanted to see what was going on, so pretty soon the center of the used-to-be-clearing was more congested than any other area in town that night. Possibly that year.

Jack grabbed one of Tucker's arms and one of Jazz's while Maddie grabbed Sam around the waist to restrain her. Jazz, fueled completely by adrenaline, used everything she'd ever been taught about self defense to get out of that hold and reach her brother, even if it meant taking on her father. A quick arm twist maneuver later she was on her knees beside her brother, holding one of his cold hands in her's.

Quickly overrun by the curious?/angry? crowd, Maddie and Jack were forced to release the other two very determined teens for the sake of holding back the masses.

The damage was both worse than any of them had expected and better than the worst case scenario. On the one hand, he wasn't definitely completely gone. On the other, he looked as though he should be.

Though Danny was still (thankfully?) in ghost form, there was no glow coming from him whatsoever. His face was thin and slack, and what was left of his skin implied that much of it had melted off in patches. His hair and suit were more liquid than solid, like ecto-matter attempting to solidify.

"Oh God, is he okay?" Tuck whispered, pale and shivering, not daring to touch him.

"We need to get him out of here," Sam insisted quickly, voice hushed and strained.

Jazz released Danny's hand for a moment, recoiled when she noticed some greenish-matter had clung to her fingers. "Oh God," she breathed hysterically, "Oh God!"

A fourth voice surprised the three of them, barely discernible through the cacophony surrounding their little bubble. "Please tell me at least one of you three idiots has a thermos?"

"Vlad?" Jazz sniffed, holding up that quivering hand as it dripped ecto-matter that used to be her brother.

"Quiet down, imbecile," the hybrid in question snapped quietly, "I'm invisible for a reason, aren't I?"

"I have one!" Tuck exclaimed, pulling one out of a satchel he'd thrown over his shoulder on the way out of his house.

"Good. Young Daniel's health will be unable to deteriorate in here for a period of time."

"Will he be okay?" Jazz asked.

"Do I look omniscient to you, girl? I have no idea whatsoever," he retorted, remaining invisible, "He certainly won't be if no one activates the damn containment device."

Jazz and Sam turned swiftly to Tucker, who, under pressure, fumbled with the lid. Unwilling to wait, Sam snatched it out of his hands and opened it in one swift motion, pointed it at Danny, then screwed the lid back on.

"What now?" she intoned solemnly, eyes bright and wide, staring at the place where her best friend's arch-nemesis should be.

"I'll allow you to see me on the count of three. Hold out the thermos, and I'll take it to my mansion where I'll begin doing my research. You all can meet me there in the morning, and we'll have to do something."

"Wait, how do we know you're not going to—"

"Shoot him? Burn him alive? What?" He paused for effect.

He snatched the thermos from Sam's outstretched hand. "Go sleep. I doubt you want him to die because you fell asleep helping."

Then he was gone. With Danny.

….

That night, after everything had calmed down, when Sam, Tucker, and Jazz were in their respective beds, all they could see was Danny. And all they could do was pray that he would be well.

 _Any way the wind blows..._


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

By the next morning (if the term could even apply to four-freaking a.m.) the flurries had increased and decreased in intensity several times.

Sam was the first one to arrive on the snowy steps outside the mayor's mansion. The last time she'd braved the snow, just a few hours ago, she'd had just a set of blackest black flannel pajamas, a half-zipped jacket, and her combat boots to ward off the wind and snow. This morning before sneaking out of her bedroom window she'd taken a little more care in her preparation.

She'd slept for only a few minutes if at all in the interim hours of the night, largely because everytime she closed her eyes all she could see was her best friend's disfigured form in the snow. It had all happened so fast, in the dark, in the crowd. She hadn't gotten a good look, only basic outlines and occasional flashes when the light from the streetlamps could get through the mob.

One might think that that would be better, that not really seeing would help, but unfortunately, for Sam at least, it may have made it even worse. If she'd had a chance to examine her best and oldest friend in the world (Sorry Tuck), really observe and catalogue the destruction, she could've calmed herself, thought of ways to help. Instead, every time she blinked the memory got worse.

She distinctly remembered that he'd lacked his usual glow, but she could not for the life of her remember if he'd opened his eyes. Did he have eyes anymore? She was pretty sure he had eyes. He had to have eyes, he needed his eyes. Sky blue or neon green, whichever, he needed his eyes.

His skin, she was pretty sure, had been grotesque. Converted to slimy ecto-gloop and sliding off the bones….had she seen his bones, bare bones? She couldn't remember.

Though the image was blurred and subject to constant change (Had she checked his feet? Did he have feet?), the smell was unforgettable. Burning. Smoky burning flesh, burning ectoplasm. It was a sharp, piercing odor that clogged her throat. Clogged it much less than the oncoming hysteria, but still.

And green. She remembered the color green.

How she'd wanted to reach out and touch him, make sure he was real. How she'd wanted smooth the rough, dripping skin of his cheek back to normal, brush his runny hair out of his eyes. How she longed to get him off the cold ground, out of the wicked snow.

Then she wanted to kick him in the face for being so stupid. From what she could infer, the half-dead idiot had taken off (in ghost form no less) in the middle of the night to chase after Skulker, taken him down, then hung out in the street until his parents showed up to blast him away. Real smart; his bad grades made a lot more sense now.

He'd looked very much like a child. A child dragged out of the water half-drowned and unresponsive, a child flung across the street by the blunt force of a speeding car. Helpless and frail and broken, but unnaturally peaceful for a situation that was so unbearably wrong.

Untouchable, but in need of all the care in the world. Unnatural, but so absolutely real.

Jazz came next, parking her car at the curb, and Sam couldn't bear to look her in the eye. Without a word, the disheveled redhead came to a stop several feet from her. On a normal day, Sam would never have minded the silence. She and her best friend's big sister had never been very close. They were and always had been polar opposites in a way. One, a peppy, brightly-dressed overachiever and people pleaser. The other, a perpetually-angry goth who didn't give a crap about what anybody else thought of her. Who, she might add, did not do particularly well in school, but for that she could blame her little side career of ghost hunting.

They shared one thing: they very intensely cared about Danny, and Danny was in trouble.

It was still dark as night. The sun was still sleeping, and Sam wouldn't have minded if it stayed that way.

After glancing down at her watch (Tucker had better show up. Soon, or she was going to drag him out of bed herself.), she decided she had nothing to lose in looking at Jazz.

It was hard to see sometimes how she and her brother could be related. If someone just saw them separately in their natural habitats, they'd see two strangers. People who knew the both of them (teachers especially) always seemed a little taken aback when reminded that slacker Danny Fenton shared parents with their star pupil Jazz. The two couldn't seem more different, appearance wise or personality wise.

It was there, though. In the outlines of their faces, their jaws and eye shapes. You could hear their shared verbal tones, see their common mannerisms. You could see it in their expressions when they thought something wasn't right, see it in their actions when someone they cared about was threatened. The resemblance was hidden, but it was there.

Another car door slamming tore Sam out of her inner monologue, and her fingers twitched toward the ectogun hidden below her jacket.

 _'Bout time, Tuck._

The last member of their little party was climbing out of the driver's seat of a well-kept but well-used sedan, bundled up in winter wear that was so bright an orange it would rival that of Jack Fenton.

Jack Fenton. Who Sam could only assume was sleeping, peaceful and safe, in his own bed in his own house with no idea what had become of his son, what he'd done to his only son. That, or he was out and about, hopefully exhausted and downtrodden, searching for the teenage kid they'd opened fire on the night before.

Had Jack fired, or had Maddie?

Sam wasn't there to see, not that it mattered. They were both guilty, she knew that.

"My dad let me borrow the car," Tuck explained, huffing and puffing from his jog to the steps, "The scarves….were my mom's idea."

"You couldn't just sneak out?" Sam asked sternly as he ascended toward her.

"With the town in a state of emergency like this? Of course not!"

"Then how did you…"

"I'm nearly eighteen, Sam. And I was coming."

Nodding solemnly, she turned to face the door. The door to the mayor's mansion. Raising a gloved fist, she knocked.

No response.

Thirty seconds passed before she knocked again. Feeling more and more on edge, she waited some more.

 _God, if he's not coming because he's sleeping, when Danny's life is in danger,_ she thought to herself, _I'll kill him. I don't know how exactly, but I'll get it done._

Even in the moment she knew the thought was irrational. He'd probably been up all night researching, studying, or contemplating the issue while petting his cat. The middle-aged jerk fought Danny and beat him up on a regular basis, but she knew that he cared very deeply. Danny being dead was the last thing the older halfa wanted; it would get in the way of his scheme for a perfect little family, and in his own twisted way he really cared about the boy. So he probably wasn't napping.

 _What if he's not coming because he doesn't want to see us?_

Bad thought, bad direction, turn around!

 _What if he's not coming out because there's nothing we can do?_

She nearly choked and felt hot tears threaten the corners of her eyes. Fury rolled within her like a tidal wave against her ribcage, and she knocked again, louder this time, vowing not to stop until she got an answer. And, if she didn't like the answer, she'd find somewhere else to put her fists.

When Vlad did answer the door, he barely caught her moving fist before she could inadvertently sock him in the throat. Skin pale, mouth ajar, eyes lidded with exhaustion, he didn't have time for this.

Jazz had apparently been going through a similar mental dilemma. After a few short beats of silence, she pulled herself together and stood firm next to Sam to face Vlad. "Where's my brother?" she asked hoarsely, her eyes burning, "Where are you keeping him?"

"The lab. He's in the lab."

…..

Vlad Masters hadn't been this exhausted in over twenty years.

The hours before had been a media firestorm. Ghost hunters shoot spectral superhero/alleged murderer in the middle of a public street. Said hero/murderer disappears without a trace in the middle of a panicked mob, all while the mayor was nowhere to be found. He'd had the wherewithal to field two calls, one to the police chief and one with a reporter, being his usual vague but charming self the entire time, before pushing the rest on his support staff. And giving his house staff the day off.

Then he'd been in the lab. All of his freedom with wealth and time had allowed him to collect the best array of ghost-related equipment in this dimension. If the technology that could help Daniel existed, he was sure he had it.

His beloved Maddie and that bumbling idiot Jack Fenton had harnessed the power of ecto-energy in a way he'd never seen before. The light—he'd arrived just in time to see the light. When he was a young man, he'd been struck in the face by a similar light. The aftermath of that incident lost him his face (for the next several years anyway) and his shot at his one true love, in addition to making him a freakish, half-alive pariah for the rest of his days.

It was only through his diligent hard work that he was able to turn himself into a very wealthy, freakish, half-alive pariah, then into an even more wealthy, handsome, half-alive mayor of a silly little town, living just miles away from both the cause of his life's greatest misfortune and his future's greatest salvation.

More immediately following the accident, the disfigurement of his face and seemingly endless time in and out of hospitals stole from him his college years, which, according to television and other sources, were supposed to be the best years of his life.

Of course, they said that about high school too, and they were certainly wrong on that count.

It wasn't as if Daniel was going to college. Vlad had seen his grades; he was terrible at math and just about everything else too. Vlad had kind of been hoping he'd go stir crazy in his "gap year," be fired from his probable job at the Nasty Burger, then come to Vlad so bored and hopeless that he'd do anything for something to do other than mindlessly beat up nuisance ghosts while all of his peers went on to bigger and better things.

Ah, how a man could dream.

If Vlad couldn't put all of his shiny equipment to good use though, young Daniel wasn't going to see Christmas, let alone his cap and gown.

The Fenton Thermos which held the injured halfa was safe in its own containment unit, a containment unit specifically designed to preserve ecto-energy. Daniel would deteriorate much more slowly there, but every passing hour put him in more danger. Once they released him, the timeline would be based more on every passing minute, though, so waiting the night until his little team of imbeciles showed up would be the best course of action.

A soft meow broke Vlad out of his train of thought.

"Maddie, dearest," he cooed at the fluffy white feline descending the stairs.

Kneeling and outstretching his arms, he smiled at the cat, who jumped into his waiting embrace and began to purr.

Sighing, he hugged her firmly. This cat showed him the only affection he ever got these days. The Maddie hologram was neat, but she couldn't hug him or actually compliment him and she eventually left him for the Jack hologram. As long as he fed and loved this cat, she would love him back.

Why couldn't people be that way?

Vlad was not completely lacking in self-awareness. Just as the younger halfa was devoted to saving people, he himself also had an obsession: having a family. A very specific family, mind you, but a family all the same. He wanted to get married, raise children. He wanted to be a companion and a mentor. But no one wanted him.

"Oh, just look at me, Madeline. Throwing myself a pity party when young Daniel's life hangs in the balance," he lamented, stroking the cat softly.

She purred in response, and he smiled down at her.

"It just makes it more difficult to plan," he sighed, "Not knowing exactly what the beam did, exactly what sorts of injuries Daniel sustained. He's lost a lot of blood and ectoplasm, I'm sure, and that's a hard enough problem to tackle."

The only existing donors with blood matching his own species were Vlad himself and his little mistake of a clone Danielle, ever since he'd shut down his disastrous cloning attempts. Danielle was just not an option, and Vlad could only give so much.

Then there was his skin. He'd had very little time to examine him before concluding that he needed to be put in stasis immediately. Ghosts didn't have concrete forms like humans did; they lacked skin, muscles, bones, organs. Their shape was determined by their ecto-energy levels and their psyche. Drawing from his own experience, Vlad knew that being in ghost form transformed his body into not quite human but not quite ghost either. While his basic organs and structural components remained, everything was more ectoplasm than solid carbon. When destabilizing, the usually pretty solid ectoplasm would try to convert back to liquid form to conserve on energy, but this still didn't explain completely what appeared to be going on with Daniel.

He wasn't just dripping green, his skin was melting off in globs.

And the internal damage! It just had to be significant, perhaps even insurmountably so. Vlad had plenty of scanners, but just keeping him stable for a while would be hit and miss. Once he was out of the thermos, he wouldn't risk putting him back in. The device basically undoes a ghost for storage, then puts them back together again upon release. More than once would be too much of a strain on his system in his current state.

He was no House, MD., but Vlad knew that like the title character of his favorite television program he was the expert in this area. No one else knew more about halfa physiology or ghost technology than he did. No one else had the supplies or the knowledge to do this better than himself; he just hoped that was enough.

So for the next several hours he checked equipment. Gathered medical supplies. Prepared blood. Pet his cat. And narrowly avoided dozing off.

Most of all he planned. Planned, and prayed.

…..

 _Now, I've heard there was a secret chord_

 _That David played, and it pleased the Lord_

 _But you don't really care for music, do you?_

Kristina Baker could say with utmost confidence that this was the worst Christmas season she had ever been through. It was worse than the year she'd been half a donkey in the nativity scene. It was worse than the year her parents divorced. It was worse than the Christmas she'd spent in the hospital with a concussion after a car accident.

 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah,_

 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah._

It was worse than every bad Christmas put together and then some.

 _It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth_

 _The minor fall, the major lift_

 _The baffled king composing hallelujah_

This was supposed to be their first Christmas together as husband and wife. A beautiful end to a beautiful year. They should've been snuggled up in bed right now, warding off the cold and dreaming about planning a nursery. No one in her family had ever had trouble conceiving, until her. Back in April when they'd married, they'd both kind of been secretly hoping for a New Year's baby. Now, eight months later, there was no baby.

 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah,_

 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah._

And no husband.

 _Well, your faith was strong but you needed proof;_

 _You saw her bathing on the roof,_

 _Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya._

She could see in her mind's eye a vision of last Christmas. The best Christmas. She'd been out of school for some time, getting started in a career she loved, and David was nearly finished with his Masters in counseling. Christmas morning, while staying at his parents house, a trail of red and green wrapped Hershey kisses lead her down the stairs to the tree, decorated with photographs and mementos of their time together, where her beloved knelt on one knee in front of their entire families and professed his love.

 _She tied you to the kitchen chair,_

 _She broke your throne and she cut your hair,_

 _And from your lips, she drew the Hallelujah!_

They should've had so many more Christmases together. Her prepared gifts for him still waited, completely wrapped, under the tree they'd decorated together. He'd been hinting for weeks about a surprise he had planned for her, and she'd been so excited. After all, how could he possibly top himself after last Christmas? She was a fool for grand gestures, and he was a wizard at them.

They deserved years and years of pajamas and presents and food. They deserved years of stockings and kids and leaving cookies for Santa. So many years….

 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah,_

 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah._

So many years had been lost. No, taken. Years of joy and love and peace. Stolen, never to be seen again. Missing in action, gone, out the door. Now, though her late husband's parents, who by all rights should have been enjoying Florida at the moment, were resting in the guest bedroom that should have been a nursery, she was alone. Again.

 _Well baby, I've been here before_

 _I've seen this room and I've walked this floor_

 _I used to live alone before I knew ya_

Lord, how she'd loved him. She'd loved the sound of his laugh and the way that he smiled, loved his gentle, passionate spirit and his thirst for helping others. She loved the way his mouth pursed slightly when he was solving a puzzle, she loved the way he sung along to the radio in the car, she loved the way—

She loved the way he was him, and he was gone.

 _And I've seen your flag on the marble arch_

 _And love is not a victory march_

 _It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah_

She knew she must have looked awful, huddled into a ball next to the couch where she should have been sleeping. Their bedroom was off limits now; she hadn't been in their since that night, that night she woke up to a police officer at her door wanting her to come down to the school and identify the body. To come down to the school, where he'd gone out to grab a file. Just a goddamn set of papers, he'd died for a set of papers.

 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah,_

 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah._

He said a boy needed help, said he'd meant to look over his file before going back to work on Monday but realized he'd forgotten them. Said it'd be a quick trip, said he'd enjoy it. And he was just so heartfelt in his yearning to help this kid, a misguided kid, he'd said, but a good kid. And she sincerely wished that kid well.

 _Well, maybe there's a God above_

 _But all I've ever learned from love_

 _Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya_

As she sat on the old carpet floor, sobbing, she knew that it wasn't the boy's fault, it wasn't the papers' fault. They were both arbitrary, random catalysts for the most unfortunate series of events possible for the tiny Baker family. The real fault belonged with the thing that killed him, the thing that killed David.

 _And it's not a cry that you hear at night_

 _It's not somebody who's seen the light_

 _It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah_

Running her hand through her limp brown hair she reached out to any power that could hear and prayed that that thing knew what it had done. They were saying it was Phantom, saying that some night janitor had seen him do it. It was hard to believe that after years of protecting this town from evil he would do something like this. It didn't make any sense, but nothing made any sense anymore. Her life was in shambles, her heart was in pieces.

She hoped that thing that did it got what it deserved.

 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah_

 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah_

…..

Everyone was suited up and had received their instructions. Stiff with determination and nearly trembling with fear, Jazz, Sam, and Tucker watched as Vlad Plasmius held out the Fenton thermos in his hand.

Holding his breath, palms sweating below his latex gloves, he extended it toward the makeshift operating table and began to twist the lid.

 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah_

 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah_

 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah_

 _Hallelujah, Hallelujah..._


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

 _Pain._

It was the first thing Danny was aware of as he hit the table, gasping.

In the minutia of space in his mind that wasn't consumed by the scorching, biting _pain,_ Danny recognized the sensation he associated with being released from a Fenton thermos after Jazz tried to help fight a ghost.

Unlike those times, he didn't immediately start floating and complaining, and he definitely didn't experience any form of relief.

This felt more like the thermos spit him out after digesting half of him. His back slapped metal with a painful _thwack,_ and the pain there spiked as if he'd just been run over. Though his spine arched and his face contorted in agony, he couldn't scream; his throat was dry, crumbly stone, and his lungs were on fire.

Then he was being grabbed. Hands, hands on his hands, hands on his feet. Each point of contact was a rake to his wounds, each finger a gouge in his abused skin.

 _They've got me, they've got me, they're tying me up!_

He tried desperately to scream. The pain, the pain and the fear were choking him, smothering him. His body wanted to writhe, find some relief from the burning, but everything he touched was part of the inferno.

Most pressing was the pain in his chest. Crowding, suffocating, blazing, a misshapen ball the size of a fist throbbed erratically in the center of his chest. He longed for it to go away, for it to stop, to rip it out. In his mind's eye he saw himself crack open his ribcage and tear out the offending object, and at the moment it seemed like the only available mode of escape, despite the physical impossibility.

Thus he struggled against the hands. Though every movement felt like rubbing shards of broken glass in an open wound, he kicked violently, clawed at the air, and contorted his torso painfully into a dozen different angles, but the hands had already locked him into what was undoubtedly some form of anti-phasing cuffs.

Alarm bells were going off in his head like crazy; every cell in his body was rebelling, was retching, pleading with his brain to do something about it please.

A flash of light.

A steep drop in fervor. New pain. Crippling pain. He couldn't move, he couldn't struggle, he couldn't scream. All he could do was bear it, and he didn't even have a choice in that. His teeth might have gnashed, there might have been tears, he couldn't know. All he could hear was ringing and he had yet to dare open his eyes, for they burned too.

 _They've got me… They've got me._

It was his worst nightmare tenfold. He couldn't remember how many times he'd woken up in a cold sweat those nights after a close call with his parents left him shaken. He couldn't remember how many times he'd flinched a little at the dinner table while hiding an mark from one of their ectoblasts under his shirt.

All those times his parents had come in talking about a new weapon. All those mornings he'd spent eating breakfast with them as they discussed new ways to kill him and those like him. When he was young at first it was terrifying. Then, once they'd proven their incompetence, it had become simply annoying, because he was invincible. As he'd gotten older, as the scrapes added up, as the stakes became higher with each technological breakthrough, as he became a little less stupid, he'd started to worry again.

But this time, this time it was too late.

He caught himself feeling sorry for himself, and a wave of rage washed over him. He had no right to feel sorry for himself, no right to complain about the pain or wish for it to be over. He had no claim to weeping or screaming, because he deserved it. He deserved everything his mad scientist parents could throw at him and more for what he'd done.

 _Wait….aren't I human now?_

If he'd had enough air to breathe, he'd have said that the thought knocked the wind out of him. Since his lungs were flailing in search of sustainability as much as the rest of him, the metaphor was hardly fitting. He had no wind to give, yet a giant boulder had been dropped on his chest all the same. It was as if his ribs had cracked, his sternum shattered, and his very heart been smashed to pieces.

If he were human now, they shouldn't still be touching him.

If he were human now, they must've figured out everything.

They would know he was their son.

They would know what he had done.

And they were still touching him, he could vaguely feel forces from the outer world through the pain. Every touch was like the pressure of a burning cigarette to his skin, but white hot and sharp, he knew it was happening even if he could hardly keep track of it in the cloudy mess that was his brain.

If they knew that he, the boy lying helplessly on a table in their lab, was their son, if they knew that and they were still being their regular scientist selves, then that was it. They had condemned him. Condemned him to the deepest pits of hell for his sins, denounced him as their son, completely disregarded his personhood.

If this was happening, then there was no hope.

They'd kill him. They'd have their way dissecting him, and he would die. If he could die. He was human at the moment, so didn't that mean he could die? He certainly wasn't getting enough oxygen, and soon they'd start opening him up. There'd be lots of blood, red, human-looking blood. He'd suffocate, he'd bleed out, surely something.

If he could die. And maybe it would be better if he did.

All that eye for an eye stuff never made much sense to him. That "Ane eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" crap didn't make any sense either, though; one eye from each person in an argument would just make the eyepatch industry really happy.

Would his death make everything better? Could it be that magic fix that negated his crime, that cleared him of his stupid mistake? Would that be fair, an even zero-zero in an indisputably unfair world?

No. it could never be even zero-zero. Because that man….Mr. Baker, Baker, David, David Baker….that man was innocent. He didn't do anything wrong at all, all he wanted to do was help. Help him, help Danny, save Danny.

And look where that got him. No one could save Danny, bad things happened to people who wanted to save Danny.

He could feel tears on his face now. Wet streaks, like acid, creeping down his cheeks. His fruitless chokes had turned into desperate gasps, but even the black world behind his eyelids was spinning. It felt like he was rolling, flipping, dipping, rising, constantly, less like a leaf in the wind and more like a trashcan in a really bad storm. Banging, clanging, full of trash, and made worthless for its trouble. His stomach roiled, his blood boiled, he wanted to scream but couldn't.

 _Make it stop, make it stop, please..._

Maybe it would stop. What was the point in debating the moral utility of his death when he clearly had no control over it? He couldn't move, could barely breathe, could hardly think.

 _You deserve this pain. Death is too good, you should suffer. You have to suffer._

The words repeated over and over again in his mind in a quick, hissing chorus. _Have to suffer, have to suffer, have to suffer..._

His stomach rebelled then. Whatever food he had eaten that day was coming up, and there wasn't anything he could do about it.

So he couldn't breathe again. He was choking, mostly on water and toast.

 _Definitely worst case scenario,_ he thought absentmindedly as he struggled, _choking to death on soggy toast remains._

Automatically he tried to sit, but the moment he made any effort to raise that burnt up shell that was his skin into a new position he knew that wasn't going to happen without help. Then the hands were back, lifting his head up until he could spit most of it out on his own now bare wound of a chest.

He opened his eyes.

 _Sam!_

Sam, Tucker, Jazz, even Vlad. He wasn't in his parents' lab at all, and no one was trying to pull him apart for science. They were trying to save him!

 _Maybe I don't have to die…._

And despite his apprehension that thought was attractive. Despite all of his despair, all of his self-hatred, he didn't want to die; he wanted to live, he wanted to fight, he wanted to own up to his crap, and he wanted to make things right again. Even the slightest chance of that future existing, a future where he didn't have to burn in hell forever, was like a beacon in the dark, maybe a trick, maybe not.

 _It doesn't matter,_ another part of him said, _It doesn't matter, things will never be right again. It's too late for that, you've screwed up everything. It's over either way._

But it wasn't over. As long as Danny was breathing (or whatever he did in ghost form—he wasn't sure), then it wasn't over. Couldn't be over, didn't feel over. He was in too much pain for anything to be over.

Shakily, nearly imperceptibly, his lips contorted into a small smile despite the physical agony that still buried him.

 _Isn't over for you. It's over for someone._

Smile gone.

It was getting harder to think. Whatever his friends and Vlad were doing was helping, he was pretty sure, but he still hadn't felt pain like this since the accident. And that was only for a couple of seconds; it had to have been several minutes of this torture by now at least.

Then, in his fuzzy, grainy brain he remembered. _Bad things happen to people who try to save Danny Fenton._

He longed to stop them. He knew what he was capable of, he'd seen himself, a version of himself, a version that was a killer. He'd killed David Baker, maybe on accident, but that didn't matter. If he killed David Baker, he could kill again. Were his friends, the only people who knew him and cared about them in the world, next? He couldn't think, couldn't apply logic to the issue. All he could think was that he was dangerous and that they were in danger.

 _Get away, get away. Let me go, let me die._

When he tried to scream next, sound came out. It wasn't quite the shout of pure hellish misery that would have fit the situation better, but the raspy groan was definitely something.

What felt like heavy, heavy wool mixed with barbed wire raked across his chest, and red hot lights flashed before his eyes. A more shuddered blubber came from his throat, a pathetic sound, but he couldn't find it in himself to be embarrassed.

 _Are they trying to clean my wounds?_

It seemed very ridiculous to him. Here he was, barely clinging to consciousness if not his life, and they were worried about infection.

"God, stop!" he wanted to scream, "Stop stop stop!" But he couldn't, and they didn't.

If he concentrated very hard, he could hear snippets of their conversation.

"He needs anesthesia, Vlad, look at him…"

"It'd be too much, he can't handle it yet, he's too fragile…"

"Just a little…"

"His heart…"

His heart. If he focused on it, tried to find the rhythm...there. There it was, and they were right to be scared. It was fast, then it was slow. Fast, slow, fast, slow...like an engine being revved up to the max but unable to fully run.

He was overheated. Below the burning, it felt like his insides were melting. Suddenly aware of the sensation, the swaying illusion returned. He recalled being very sick once as a child, having that burning fever. Feeling heavy, feeling tired, eyelids drooping….

No, he had to stay conscious. If he didn't stay conscious...well, he wasn't exactly sure what would happen but in movies and television it was always bad.

The memory of being sick came back to him. He remembered his nice, warm bed...too warm, he was too warm. Cold baths, he thought he'd had a few cold baths. His parents had insisted on them, because of his fever, he'd hated it. He'd felt cold already, then these were too cold, freezing cold, frozen fire consuming him. Teeth chattering, crying. He wanted to be cold _now_. Needed cold, too hot, needed cold, hot hot hot hot….

He remembered his parents. Always so caring, so sympathetic. Wanted to help him, ease the pain, would have borne it for him if they could. Held him in their arms, held his hand, surrounded him with anti-ghost trappings that were supposed to make him feel better. He remembered how loved he'd felt, how safe despite the chattering of teeth and the unending hacking. They hadn't cared when he coughed all over them or vomitted on their jumpsuits, they'd just wanted him to get better.

Now there was a different set of people hovering over his sick bed, and they were doing a hell of a lot more than cleaning up his used tissues or wiping up his sick, though he was sure that was involved..

He'd always loved that children's Motrin, the pink stuff.

Man, he'd kill for some ibuprofen now.

A drop in his now empty stomach. His head ached, near bursting. He could feel himself rounding the bend back to self-loathing and hopelessness, and some part of him knew that he wanted to make it through this he had to stay away from that corner, far away.

Die for some ibuprofen. Maybe he'd die for some ibuprofen.

But the monster in him was back and it was clawing at his insides.

 _Is this how it's going to be from now on?_ he wondered to himself, _Constant back and forth between being able to live with myself and not so much?_

The external pain was subsiding then. Maybe they'd given him the anesthesia, he wasn't listening any more.

It must have been...Wednesday morning. Hmm, Wednesday. Wed-nes-day. Weeeddd-neezzz-day. Only Wednesday. His life had only shattered late Sunday, and it was only Wednesday. It had taken him less than 72 hours to make the biggest mistake of his life and be completely destroyed. He worked fast.

Math was funny.

He was losing feeling. His fingers, his toes. Did he have fingers and toes? Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes….head, shoulders, knees and toes….

Funny. When he was a ghost, he didn't always have knees or toes. Where did they go?

The thought was very funny in that moment. His ghostly tail basically made him an air-mermaid! A ghostly, air-mermaid, wasn't that something?

He could feel himself slipping, but he was okay. He couldn't exactly remember how he'd gotten there anymore, but it didn't matter. It was sleepy time, and sleep sounded nice.

Very, very nice indeed.

…..

Tucker's gloved hands gripped the cool golden sink in Vlad Masters' bathroom like it was his only anchor to this earth. His hold was precarious, as his green and red coated fingers were constantly slipping around the brim as he tried to stop shaking.

He'd already emptied his stomach into the fanciest toilet he'd ever seen once in the last five minutes since he'd been in there, but he felt like doing it again. Just looking at himself in the ornate mirror which hung above the basin made him sick.

The mirror hung in an intricately decorated (with tiny footballs—really?), dark green frame. The entire bathroom screamed, "Packers! Packers!" The tiles were gold and green, the rug was gold and green, the hand towels were gold and green.

Tuck supposed he was lucky; this was Vlad's least offensive obsession to date. The bathroom could have been Maddie or Danny themed, or maybe even dead Jack Fenton themed. Yeah, definitely could've been worse.

Vlad had provided them with hazmat suits for the surgery, and Tucker's time in it could easily be put up there alongside the worst several hour periods of his life. Danny had passed out ten or so minutes in, which was probably for the best, but everyone else had to keep going.

He shuddered; the images wouldn't leave him alone. He'd always hated hospitals, but this wasn't a hospital. This was a fancy mansion with an underground laboratory where he'd been forced to simultaneously torture and save his greatest friend in the world from wounds inflicted upon him by said friend's own parents.

"How did we get here?" he muttered to himself as he held his hands under the faucet in an attempt to get rid of some of the blood before removing them. This couldn't be the most sanitary way to remove a jumpsuit like this, but he was no expert, and he had to get out of it. As quickly as possible, before his hands shook too much to do the job.

Nothing would be the same after what they'd just been through. Tucker, Sam, and even Jazz had all done some very dangerous things with Danny and seen him be pretty banged up before. But never like this.

There was no unseeing it. Especially when a grisly combo of dried blood and ectoplasm coated his person in this way, especially when it was so fresh in his mind, when it wasn't even over yet. Danny was barely stable, covered in bandages, could hardly breathe. His ghost powers should have kicked in by now, he should have been better already. Maybe not 100%, but better.

The goal going in had just been to keep him stable. Bandage him up, get a few scans in, let his powers do the rest of the work. But, for some reason, they mostly hadn't.

They'd cancelled school again that morning, not that it mattered. He wouldn't have gone, and he sure knew Sam wouldn't. Her parents were probably scouring the city for her, and the last place they'd look would be the basement of the mayor's mansion next to her blood splattered hooligan friend mere hours after the town hero/murderer had been blasted, some said to bits.

Though they were hardly less gory than they had been, he could no longer resist the urge to pull of his gloves. So they came off, and, disgusted, he flung them immediately into the nearby bathtub. The dark green ceramic suddenly became much more Christmas-y, between the red and the green, and the stark tastelessness of the situation punched him in the throat. That was his friend's _blood_ , and it was _awful_.

Feeling the hysteria coming on quick, he began to tear desperately at the suit, wrangling it off his body as quickly (albeit as awkwardly) as possible, and sending it the same way as the gloves.

Street clothes revealed again, he took a deep breath and turned to reface the mirror.

His hands. He'd gotten it on his hands. Red with some green, maybe a little bit of skin. He hadn't realized it, but it made sense. Some of that must have come off too.

Barely falling to his knees in front of the toilet in time, he vomited once again and began to weep.

A soft knock interrupted his hysteria.

"Tucker?" Sam. "Tucker, can I come in?"

Feeling gross, he went to wipe off his mouth with one hand, but stopped it midway to his face when he remembered the blood. Blood, ectoplasm, and skin. He was breathing too quickly; the world was spinning.

"Come in," he breathed, hardly loud enough for her to hear.

The door creaked open a couple of inches, enough for her to peak in. He saw her tired, violet eyes and was able to breathe out again. He wasn't alone in this; none of them were.

She'd nixed her usual skirt and crop top look for the day, instead wearing just a plain black shirt and plain black yoga pants. Her hair, which she'd been growing out a bit over the past few months, was simply brushed and newly released from the ponytail which had contained it in the lab.

Upon seeing his distress, without hesitation, she crossed the small room and knelt on the floor beside him.

"It's on my hands," he sobbed, panicking, "Sam, it's on my hands!"

Without a word, she reached up to a hook on the wall, grabbed one of the 'P' embroidered towels, and ran the sink to get it wet. Tuck thought it was nice of her to ignore his blubbering; a Sam from another time might've tried to slap it out of him, but this Sam knew better.

She returned to her place on the tile in front of him and grabbed one of his now violently shaking hands. Softly, with a tenderness he hadn't known she possessed, she began to clean off the offending red and green splotches. By the time she had repeated the process on his left hand, he had fully transitioned from abject, terrified wailing to quiet sniffles.

"Thanks," he whispered, wrapping his arms around his legs and putting his head between his knees.

Sam mirrored his position, and they sat there for several more minutes, enjoying the companionable silence.

"I think we're going to be okay," Sam murmured absently, staring at the floor with droopy, tired eyes.

Tucker didn't respond.

 **AN: Hey, guys, here's another chapter, and it looks like we've hit the 40k word mark! Woo!**

 **If you have feelings about this fanfic, please take some time to leave a review. I love to hear what you're thinking, and it really makes my day to hear from you, so any response you can give would be greatly appreciated.**

 **Thanks for reading!**


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

The crunch of snow beneath boots at the end of a long, cold day was mind numbing. After hauling the hunk of ice that encapsulated the hunter ghost back to a containment unit in their lab, Maddie and Jack Fenton had spent the rest of the early morning and the entire day scouring the city for what should have been a very incapacitated ecto-entity. No luck.

Maybe Phantom was hiding somewhere. Maybe he'd had help, maybe someone was hiding him. Then again, maybe he'd just disintegrated. There should have been a mess somewhere, a splatter of ectoplasm indicating the location of his demise. The weapon was unpredictable; it could have destabilized his core all together, then it was possible he could have just splashed into nothingness.

None of their sensors could find him. In fact, there had been no ghost attacks that day, not even by sub-sentients, leaving them with plenty of time to focus on their task of locating the ghost boy they'd taken down just hours ago.

Nothing to show for it.

The warmth of home enveloped husband and wife like well-worn gloves the moment they crossed the threshold into their home. It was a pure, wholesome sensation. The feeling of being belonging, of being in the right place.

It was past dinner time, and the kitchen showed no evidence of having been used, for neither cooking purposes nor pizza box purposes.

"Will you see if Jazz and Danny are in their rooms while I make some hot cocoa?" Maddie asked her husband, who perked up considerably at the idea of what in his mind equated to melted fudge in a cup. "Ask them what they want for dinner."

She felt a bit bad about how the situation had gone down with them and Jazz. She'd been so irrationally against them doing what they had to do to contain the menace and protect the town, and she'd been so unreasonably distraught when she'd realized what they'd done.

The morning after the morning after the initial incident, Maddie and Jazz had had a conversation. Her daughter had been deeply entrenched in denial of the situation with Phantom, shaken to her core by the prospect of what had actually happened and committed to the necessity of an explanation that would banish the moral quandary.

 _It's our fault,_ Maddie thought as she began prepping the hot cocoa, _We sheltered them too much, both of them. Now they don't understand the danger that ghosts really pose, and they could get hurt._

Jazz had been in bed last night when Maddie and Jack finished containing the hunter ghost. Not asleep, definitely pretending, but she'd been safe in the house. Danny wasn't in his room; she assumed he'd stayed with Tucker again, and hadn't had the heart to wake the Foleys to ask.

She was worried about him; he'd been under the weather. If he was still at Tucker's, maybe that meant he was feeling better.

No one had been hurt last night, and that in itself was no small miracle. Phantom's little tirade was like nothing they'd ever seen. The way witnesses described what they had seen painted a picture of a very powerful and very, very volatile entity, who had not displayed any deliberate care in his rampage through cars. Many people were out motor vehicles, and even more apartments had lost windows. Some buildings had even suffered structural damage, and the list of property damage went on.

Something had changed in Phantom before that night. A shift had occurred, and she and Jack could only speculate on the nature of that shift without actually finding the entity and testing their hypotheses.

"They're not in their rooms." Jack's announcement interrupted Maddie's train of thought. "Didn't see them anywhere."

"Did you check the bathrooms?"

"Yes."

"The lab?"

"Yes?"

"The observatory?"

"Yes, Maddie, yes, I looked everywhere. Jazz's car is gone; maybe she went to the library or something, and Danny's probably with his friends."

Danny spent more time with his friends than he did at home, it felt like. Definitely if you didn't count time spent sleeping, and even if you counted time spent sleeping the balance was skewed away from home. Still, it made Maddie uncomfortable. And Jazz...Jazz had never really had a lot of friends, and among those she had had in high school she had kept very few. The library, the grocery store, yes those were possibilities, but it didn't feel right.

The cocoa was ready, but Maddie was no longer interested.

Out of her utility belt she took her cell phone, a basic, outdated thing her kids had talked her into getting a few years ago. While Jack descended on the steaming beverage she'd prepared for him, she found Jazz in her contacts and placed a call.

The phone rang. And rang. Just when Maddie was about to give up and try Danny, a tired voice replaced the beeps.

"Hello?"

Maddie's concerns for her daughter were immediately cemented the moment she heard her daughter's voice.

"Are you okay, sweetie? Where are you? Do you need your father and I to come get you?"

"No, Mom, I'm fine," Jazz assured her hastily, a familiar nervous laugh bubbling up her throat. "Don't worry about me, I'm just….out."

"Have you seen Danny? Is he with you?"

"What? No, of course not. You know Danny, always out with those friends of his, no time for his sister….I wouldn't be surprised if they were out of reach though. Teenagers and their phones these days, leaving 'em everywhere, forgetting to charge them, you know how it is. He'll turn up soon, I'm sure he's fine, of course he's fine."

A stone dropped in Maddie's stomach, and she rearranged her face into a stoic mask. This was weird, this was beyond weird. Jazz only rambled like this when she was in crisis, and this crisis had something to do with Danny. No matter how immersed she was in her job, her kids came first. That was what the whole thing was about, right? Keeping the town safe, keeping her kids safe. From the ghostly menace.

"Jasmine, tell me where your brother is."

"With his friends, Mom! Sam, Tucker maybe….or Sam or Tucker. Fifty-fifty each way, maybe both! They're probably all three together, right now. With their phones on silent because they're having a movie marathon or something. They do love that one franchise about massacred authority figures. It's horror, you know, and when a phone rings during a horror movie, it's like urrgh, you know?" The panic was hyping Jazz up now, and Maddie was starting to regret not microchipping her as an infant.

Jack was watching with concern now, a chocolate mustache fresh on his face.

"Well, where are _you_ then?"

"Nowhere," she squeaks, "Nowhere. Went for a drive, that's it, that's all. Driving around. Pulled over to talk to you of course, since, you know, phones….safe driving….you know."

Then it all made sense to Maddie. Maybe this didn't have anything to do with Danny at all. She sighed and picked up a mug of hot cocoa after all. Her daughter was so empathetic; it was sad, really, since the object of her fixation was so undeserving.

"We couldn't find Phantom either, hon. You should come home; we've got cocoa." She waved the mug in the air for effect, knowing her daughter couldn't see it but putting on a show for herself and Jack. Her strange devotion to this thing, this killer, was unnerving. She wanted her daughter home and safe, now.

When met with silence on the other end, she decided to turn on the guilt factor. "We never see you since you've been at college; we get so little time together….it would mean so much if we could just have a little Christmas bonding time. You, me, your father, Danny, all together as a family during the holidays."

"You know what would be great?" Jazz asked, clearly faking enthusiasm, voice still on edge. "Some mother-daughter bonding time! Or, you know, Dad too! I'd love to spend time with you guys, you know, and we really should let Danny be with his friends. I mean, he's with you guys all the time. I'd like to spend time with you too."

Maddie felt warmth glow inside her despite niggling doubts about her daughters sincerity. Though she didn't have a lot of time to spend with her offspring, they rarely wanted to spend it with her, so this was kind of special. "Oh, that sounds—"

"Jazz!" A voice on the other end of the line. "Jazz!" Was that….Sam? "Vlad says he's gonna wake up soon, come on, we have to…."

There was a mumble that sounded a lot like, "I'm on the phone," then a "With who?" then a lot of indiscernible bickering. All of that glowing warmth disappeared pretty quickly.

"Jasmine Fenton, where exactly are you and where is your brother?"

…..

The first thing Danny was aware of was a soft mewing. A soft mewing, then an ache. A bearable ache, but an ache he was afraid of. Didn't know why; couldn't remember.

Though it felt as if his eyes had been glued shut, he pried them open and locked gazes with the fluffy white creature that Vlad had named after his mother.

His mother.

A vision seized him, a quick, two second glimpse, an image of a scene he couldn't place but like the ache feared, feared deeply.

 _Mama mia, mama mia, let me go!_

Shadowy faces, dark silhouettes. Towering over him in a backdrop of dark and a shimmering white. Fear, cold, a bright light, pain….

The cat plopped itself down next to Danny's right knee, and just stared at him. Normally, Danny wouldn't associate with the creature, but a feeling desperation was constricting his throat and he needed something. He felt like he was floating, like his limbs were dead weight if they even existed. He felt away, apart, ethereal, and he needed an anchor so badly. If he could move, if he could reach out, pet the cat, maybe he'd feel like a real, solid person again.

So he commanded himself to sit up. Ordered his muscles to get a move on, strained himself just to move a little bit in her direction.

 _Come on, you stupid cat, stupid hand. One of you has to move._

Still stationary, he exhaled frustratedly in exhaustion.

For an indefinite amount of time he lay there and stared at the cat, who apparently didn't have anything better to do in her life than stare back at him. He wondered what it was like to be a cat, especially a rich cat like this one. No responsibilities, just luxury and laziness. And having to put up with a crazy old person.

He remembered a movie he'd watched as a child. Didn't know the name, only remembered that an old lady had suddenly died and left her entire inheritance to her cats. Or something like that, he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of anything any more.

When he finally regained some control over his fingers and toes, moving them was like manipulating stiff, burnt sausages. He tore his eyes away from the cat long enough to try to find his own hands, but all he could see was a light, white sheet that obscured his entire body below the neck.

In the confusing whirl that was his mind, he pictured himself with a white sheet enshrouding his entire self, head and all. In this image he was dead, just plain dead under a sheet, and he wanted to throw up.

By some miracle his elbows worked to prop him up a few meager inches, but they collapsed almost immediately, leaving him retching, part on his side and burning.

The burning, yes the burning. It was coming back, no, the burning….

"It isn't fair," he wanted to mumble. But he couldn't mumble, and he wasn't sure what wasn't fair. Was it unfair that he had to suffer like this, that he had to burn, or was it unfair that he wasn't dead, that he still lived at all? Were those the same? His head spun. That question enough would have been enough to make him empty his stomach again, if there had been anything in it.

A vision of the white sheet that covered him from shoulder to toe shifted to conceal his entire face hit him. A vision of himself still, frozen stiff, on the examination table under the sheet.

He supposed that he liked the sheet where it was, sliding off of him because he was real, he could move, rather than placed reverently over a form that wasn't him and would never could never ever move ever again. Yes, this was probably better.

But he wasn't sure.

 _Pain meds._ Maybe they'd given him pain meds. He remembered Sam, Tuck, Jazz, Vlad; maybe they'd given him pain meds after he passed out, maybe that was why he couldn't concentrate, why he didn't make any sense. But they were wearing off, and coherency wouldn't be worth it. Wouldn't be worth the burning.

He hated Vlad's lab. The colors, the beeping, the light. He hated how the table felt on his skin, he hated how _his skin_ felt on his skin…. The dull, all-over sort of ache was becoming sharper, hotter, tighter, awful. His hands on metal didn't feel like his hands, the sheet scratched at his gauzed torso like sandpaper or worse.

His eyes squeezed shut, and he clenched his teeth to hold off a gasp of pain. He remembered the last time he'd been awake on this table, and this pain wasn't anything in comparison to what he'd felt then.

 _Oh God….what if it gets that bad? I can't handle it if it gets that bad, not again!_

Though moving his joints was like scraping two shards of pure rust together, he propelled himself upward in whatever way he could, searching frantically for something in the lab that could bring him relief, that could stave off the onslaught of horrible, mind-shattering pain that he knew was probably coming.

A rush of air; he was falling. When he hit the ground he didn't care that his side exploded. He used whatever strength he could muster to haul himself into a half-sitting position again, using the other hand to drag himself toward the closest cabinet.

Chemistry had kicked his butt once already, and had no idea what he was looking for short of a box labeled, 'Pain Meds for Danny.' Considering where he was, finding such a box was not completely impossible, but he needed something, anything, so bad.

He'd made it maybe three feet when he noticed the trail of blood he was leaving behind him. The sheet barely covered his bottom half now, but he couldn't find it in himself to care about his nudity. His skin, God, his skin was no longer his skin as he had known it. It was slimy and crusty at the same time, a mottled, reddened mess. He wanted to scream in horror at himself, but he couldn't find the air.

The pain was still escalating; any moment his elbows would collapse and he'd be stuck where he was on the floor. This was an awful plan, but he wasn't even disappointed in himself; he always made the worst plans.

Without his permission a shaky hand raised itself to his head as if to absent-mindedly run itself through his hair, only to meet with a tender, assumedly burnt as the rest of him, scalp, and nothing else.

 _My hair._

He used his last scrap of energy to curl himself into the tightest ball he could, which wasn't much, dragging the sheet with him as much as possible to preserve his modesty, though every square inch of skin it touched it sawed.

 _I'm a monster,_ he deplored internally, _A burning, wallowing, hideous monster._

"I'm sorry," he rasped, "Sorry, sorry, sorry…."

He wasn't apologizing to anyone in particular. A zillion faces flashed by his mind's eye, not the least being his parents. Mom, Dad, Mom, Dad, Sam, Tuck, Mom, Dad, Jazz…. Kristina Baker. David Baker. Baker Mom, Baker Dad, people he'd never seen but people he'd certainly, certainly wronged in the deepest, most irreversible way possible.

"I'm sorry!" It was meant to be a shout, a shout to the heavens and any cruel, capricious god that could be watching. This was his punishment for so many things, and he deserved it. He deserved it, he knew he did, but he was sorry. Couldn't they see that he was sorry? That he hadn't meant to? That none of his many, many mistakes had had malicious intent, that none of them could have possibly lead to this in his most brutal nightmares!

Not exactly. Not exactly….

The burning, the burning. In a sort of vague, last-ditch effort to stop that horrible hellfire, he attempted to conjure up some ice in his hand. He'd been working on using his ghostly powers in human form, and he'd gotten pretty good. He envisioned a blue layer of cold encompassing him, encasing him, providing a cool reprieve for just a few moments.

But nothing happened.

Alarmed at his inability to even produce a snowflake, he flexed his hand as if to produce an ecto-blast. Nothing. He tried to float, which would have been a bright idea in the first place. Nothing. He tried invisibility, intangibility, he reached to where he knew his core was, but….nothing.

Maybe the universe didn't know, didn't know how sorry he was. But how else could he suffer? What else could he do, what else did he have to give?

What did parents tell children when they'd done something wrong?

 _Think about what you've done._

It was about the only thing still within his power. The only things he could control were his thoughts, and even those weren't completely his own, partially consumed by the agony that was residing in his own skin. But maybe, just maybe, he could convert some of that physical pain into emotional pain, and maybe that was more just. Maybe that would prove how sorry he was.

He knew he wasn't making any sense. He knew that, he knew it. But he had to do something.

 _It was late. Sam and I were just about to go home; I'd have been home on time, if we'd just left, but….a blip, on the monitor. Went to check it out._

The images. The sounds. The feelings. He played them in his head as vividly as he could recall them, over and over again, faster and faster.

Until voices in the real world brought him back to reality.

"Our son, Vlad, he's our son—"

"Come on, Vladdie, let us through, we can help—"

"You don't understand, just wait—"

 _His parents._ They were coming. Panic bubbled up inside him, giving him a burst of energy significant enough to allow him to scuttle away a foot or more. His burnt hands slipped on the viscous blood that had accumulated on the ground, putting him flat on the floor again before his parents came into view.

"Danny!"

He was ashamed, he was afraid. He was sorry, and he wanted them to go away.

In moments, a pair of arms had lifted him back onto the table, but he could hardly think to place them through the all-consuming agony that gripped his entire body.

Someone or perhaps several someones were trying to assist him; logically he could put that together, but every neuron in his brain screamed at him to fight, to get away. Feebly he flailed and cried out, incessantly begging whoever it was to stop, to pretty, pretty please not hurt him anymore. Hardly able to comprehend the words that spilled out of his mouth, he gargled out desperate apologies until his throat ceased to function.

The world got spinnier and his mind less focused. Soon he couldn't remember what the mouthed apologies were for; as he drifted away all he knew without reason was that they weren't enough.

…..

"We're taking him home, Vlad, that's all there is to it," Maddie announced as she marched up the stairs out of the mayor's lab. Jack may have wanted to stay with Danny, but she had some words to give to a few people.

"Maddie, darling, please, you have to understand—"

That was too much. Heart seething with vitriol, she whirled around to stare down her once-friend from the top of the staircase.

"I'm not your darling. I'm not your old college chum. I'm not even your associate. You implore me to listen, to try to _understand_ whatever bizarre series of awful decisions led to you storing my gravely injured teenage son alone in some secret laboratory under your stupid atrocity of a mansion?"

"Madeline, please, you were so busy—"

"No pleases either, buster. You had no right! You should've called us, hell even come in person to drag us here, no matter what we were doing. He's our son, Vlad, he's our son, and he's hurt. Nothing comes before that."

She flung open the metallic door leading to the main part of the house and stalked angrily in the direction of the room where they'd left the children. "Instead you conspire with a set of teenagers to willfully conceal him from us when we could have helped him. As if that wasn't enough you left him alone, with neither sufficient anesthesia nor restraints—we're all lucky he didn't kill himself falling off that damned table of yours in his condition."

The moment she and the billionaire stepped into his ornate sitting room, parlor thing, the three adolescents in question stood. "And you three! Why didn't you call us, why? Sam, Tucker, what on Earth did you even tell your parents? They must be worried out of their minds for you two, and if they knew this was how you treated your friends, what do you think they'd say? Would they be proud? And, Jasmine, don't you even get me started on why your behavior was particularly atrocious. Of all the people in the world, I never would've pegged a capacity for such horrible irresponsibility on you. Do you know how much this could have hurt your brother? Your brother, Jasmine!"

Sam and Tucker were staring stoically at the floor, but Jazz was in tears. "Mom, I'm so sorry….I-I just didn't, just wasn't….It didn't seem like a good—"

"What would have been so bad about it, hm? What could your father and I possibly have done to make the situation worse than it already is? We're the foremost ghost experts in the world, whatever that robo-ghost did, we're hands down the most qualified to fix it."

"Mom, I'm—" Jazz blubbered, her sniffs morphing into fully-fledged sobs in front of everyone. Maddie couldn't remember ever in her entire life yelling at Jazz like that; there'd been that time she had that awful, motorcycle-riding boyfriend, then that time with that pop star, but overall Jazz had been a successful and obedient teenager. She'd been stubborn, she'd been irresponsible, but not like this. Never like this.

Reflexively, she wanted to comfort the girl. She wanted to wrap her arms around her and tell her that everything was going to be okay; anyone would be shaken up after a day like this, but she was an adult now. An adult who lived on her own most of the time and should have been capable of basic reasoning. Basic reasoning!

"It's because of that ghost boy, isn't it? You didn't want us to help your brother because we're bad people, is that it? Bad people for shooting the ghostly menace you worship so much."

Her daughter's tear-laden aqua eyes stared at her in a mix of horror and pain. It was the only connection, the only thing that made sense, that could explain this variation in her daughter's behavior. "What? No—"

"Don't lie to me, Jasmine. You've been making no sense ever since the whole debacle happened this weekend. Are you trying to hurt us for hurting that ecto-menace? Are you actively trying to sabotage your family for protecting the town, for protecting _you,_ from an uncontrollable monster who has proved time and time again to be malicious, untrustworthy? Where in your idealist's head did the idea come from that—"

"Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Jazz shrieked suddenly, "You don't know anything! You think you do, but you don't, you just don't…." Her words trailed off into a mess of tears and erratic breathing; Sam and Tucker coaxed her to sit, each of them pale, shaking too, but certainly determined not to intervene.

Maddie froze, froze and evaluated her daughter, a shaking, bawling mess. Maybe she needed help, maybe college wasn't good for her. Maybe the stress of living away from home—no, Jazz was forty on the inside. That wouldn't make any sense.

The Ghost Boy, though. This had something to do with the Ghost Boy.

"Did he hurt you, Jazz?"

"What?" she sniffled, wiping her nose on her sweater sleeve.

"The Ghost Boy, Jazz, did he hurt you? Did he do something to you, to Danny?" Too tired to be very angry at her daughter, she crossed the room and knelt down on her knees in front of her. Taking her free hand in hers, she begged her softly for an answer. "Please, honey, I'm your mother. I want to help you, both of you, so badly, but I can't if no one tells me what's going on. You understand that don't you?"

Her daughter nodded, still weeping, but said not a word.

"I need to know what's going on, sweetheart. Please. Please help me help you."

"You can't, Mom. You just can't."

 **Author's note: Here you are, an update. Thanks for reading and let me know what you're thinking in your reviews! I expect to hit 50k words next chapter, and it'd be cool to do it on a good note.**


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

The next time Danny awoke, there was no room in his body for panic. His brain was a fuzzy blur and his limbs were heavy steel weights, pinning him down to whatever surface he was on. He heard a shifting sound to his right and tilted his head in that direction, a mumble of recognition falling through his lips once he recognized the man in the giant orange jumpsuit who sat beside him.

"How are you feeling, Danny-boy? You took a pretty rough hit back there."

 _It's fine,_ he thought automatically, _'M okay._ But those words were simultaneously a lie and beyond his capacity for speech at the moment, so he settled for a reassuring mumble in his dad's direction. He was always okay, as far as his parents knew, though something felt different here. There was an odd feeling in his chest, a twisting, turning burn, the origin of which he could not place. It was a disturbing intrusion that chewed on his heart and kicked at his lungs.

Since he was seeing double and his neck was too stiff to be moved much, his survey of the room was not incredibly informative; it was not his room, it wasn't the lab, but it was a place he'd been before.

 _How strange,_ he thought absently.

"You're safe now," his dad reassured him, "Your mom just went upstairs to get some coffee, I'm sure she'll be back down soon."

"Mm," he groaned, too sleepy to really care what his father's words meant. It was comforting to him, for some reason, to have his father here. He felt like a small child who'd fallen asleep in the car, only to wake up as he is being placed in bed by a loving parent. The resulting cushion of security that this provided for him served to smother the strange burn in his chest just a bit.

"Don't worry, you should be back asleep in a minute, then you should be up and about soon, we think," his dad assured him, though Danny wasn't sure why he'd want to get up any time soon. That beautiful semi-paralysis of half-sleep made any movement sound like heresy; yes, he'd be perfectly content to just lie right there forever.

His weighted eyelids fell shut again and he continued to enjoy that slow slope into the unconsciousness he knew was coming. Soon he was no longer in the strange room at all; he was floating, and he was happy. A bed, a hammock, a cloud. It didn't matter if he was lying numbly on the surface of the sun; his exhausted bliss made up for it.

Then he felt a gentle kiss to his forehead, paired with a short burn.

"I love you, son. So much."

…..

The next time he awoke, it was considerably less pleasant. The weighty, tired feeling in his limbs abated too quickly, and a rough, continuous ache filled in to replace it. His throat more compliant this time, he groaned and hoped irritably that someone would be around to put him under again.

"Awake again, I see."

Momentarily alarmed, Danny shifted as much of his weight as he could onto his right elbow so that he could clearly see the man in the chair beside him.

"Plasmius," he snapped, though it came out as more of a grated wheeze than a threat.

There he was, Danny's worst enemy clad in a suit and tie at his bedside, or rather tableside, his cat on his lap and a book in his hands.

This time, memories of the situation came back way to fast. That night, the snow, the gun. Lying here, the pain. His parents.

He collapsed on his back again. _Shit._

"Good to see you're aware of your surroundings again," Vlad commented, turning to the next page in his book, "You've been in and out for quite a while now. Was beginning to think I'd never have to hear your wretched voice again—pity."

"Asshole," he coughed, indignant.

"Ah, there's that harmonious hum I'd miss so much. That's a pretty abrasive attitude to show one of the only people who is trying to help you."

"Help me? That's rich."

Danny could practically hear Vlad stop reading. About two beats passed while Vlad presumedly looked at him, surprised, before following up his quip with an even more indignant, "Excuse me?"

"I know you're not trying to help me; you never help me. You want to hurt me, use me for one of your ridiculous, evil plots, well guess what! I'm pretty sure I _can't_ be hurt much more, and I'm useless to boot. So whatever your plan is, feel free to give up."

He heard Vlad take a deep breath. "I'll have you know, young man, that I'm the one who saved you after your loving progenitors nearly fried you to death with their Fenton ray of ghost-doom, or whatever ridiculous name it was given by your fat, stupid father. I'm the one who kept you from destabilizing or bleeding to death on the spot, and I am the primary reason you're still alive at all."

Danny wasn't impressed. "Thanks so much!" he exclaimed with as much sarcastic vitriol as he could muster in his current state, "Not sure Hallmark makes cards for that, though; might have to come up with something homemade, get out that old construction paper…."

Vlad sighed, opening up the book again. "You're an idiot."

"Thanks, I know."

"We need to get our stories straight, Daniel."

Danny stared straight up at the ceiling and didn't say a word. He was done talking to Vlad, he wanted to go back to sleep. Stories didn't matter, nothing mattered anymore. Stories had mattered; they'd mattered all those years he'd lied to his parents, they'd mattered in those brief, fleeting moments when he'd thought that he could escape what he'd done if only people knew it was an accident.

"Do you understand?"

But no. Stories didn't matter, not anymore. Results did. Words didn't matter, actions did. Danny didn't speak.

"Daniel, please," Vlad implored impatiently, "Giving me the silent treatment isn't helping anyone, most of all yourself. You're lucky I convinced your parents to go get some sleep while I looked after you personally. If I hadn't they'd have started asking you a couple of delightful questions, questions you don't have the right answers to. And your wrong answers would have contradicted my answers, then we would have had a pickle." He paused for a beat. "Do you understand, Daniel?"

 _Stop using my name!_ he wanted to yell. Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. It felt wrong, it felt bad. He, himself, he felt wrong, he felt bad. _Those must have been some pretty strong meds they had be under._

After a longer bout of silence, Vlad sighed again. "Fine. If you don't speak then you can more easily listen. You snuck out at night to go to your friend Tucker's house. As you were walking you saw Skulker—or, as you should call him when your parents ask, that robot ghost—flying through the sky. You had an ectogun on you, and, being the imbecilic adolescent that you are, you decided to follow him and confront him. He shot you with some new weapon of his, then it is implied that Phantom, in an attempt to save you, attacked the robot ghost and chased him down the street until he in turn was confronted by your parents. You have no idea what happened to the weapon, and the whole event is a bit fuzzy to you. Do you understand?"

Silence, stony silence. At some point during Vlad's little explanation Danny had closed his eyes, and he could think of no reason not to keep them that way. If he was committed to ignoring Vlad he figured he should at least do it thoroughly.

"Have it your way, boy. I found a rather interesting novel in one of your little friend's bookbags."

Danny heard some pages rustle as he assumed the old man gestured with the thing. Before he could think clearly, he opened his eyes and whipped his head around as rapidly as his neck would allow to look at the object in question. In Vlad's right hand was a copy of _All Quiet on the Western Front,_ identical to the one he knew was sitting in his bag at home.

"You went through my friends' stuff?"

"Ah, he speaks," Vlad remarked relaxing in his , "And yes, yes I did."

So much for ignoring him.

"That's—that's insane, you know that right?"

Vlad merely turned another page.

"You aren't even reading it, are you?" The man turned another page.

Something about that offended Danny deeply. This was one of the first books ever he'd actually wanted to and been able to study for Mr. Lancer. He'd been quite enjoying it before...the incident, and even though the title still made no sense (the Western front was anything but quiet), he loved a good war story.

"Have you reached the ending yet, Daniel? It's a good one, very succinct."

"What? No, and don't you dare spoil it for me, I actually really want to read this one."

"This is my second go-through, I admit, and I may be skimming a little."

The hopelessly beaten teen shoved the disturbing image of Vlad going through his friends' things to the back of his mind; it certainly wasn't the creepiest thing he'd ever done in his life. For several minutes Danny merely took stock of himself, taking advantage of the opportunity since he didn't know when he would find that sweet spot between too drugged to care and in too much pain to know again. What he could see of his skin was reddened and rough, and though he did not move a hand to touch it he could feel that his head was bald.

This struck another blow to his morale, and whatever animation he had received from his exchange with Vlad vanished. The world was once again a bleak, hopeless abyss for him. He was a monster, he had always been a monster, and now he looked like one too. It was fitting, too fitting. He pictured a cruel, capricious god in the heavens above laughing at his transformation from not-so-bad-on-the-eyes vigilante hero to a hideous, crippled murderer.

"Why is it that you like this book so much, Daniel?"

 _Stop using my name like that._

Silence. Stony, sullen silence.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say that Remarque waxes a little too philosophical for your tiny mind to comprehend. Wouldn't you agree?"

Continued quiet. Danny wondered whether Vlad would put him under again if he asked. He could say he was in too much pain, and though the raw aching was currently under control he knew that after all he'd just been through he should be able to effectively fake pain.

"So you enjoy my monologuing, hm? Well, let's see if I can get this right. An excited young boy decides he wants to fight a war, then he realizes being a fighter isn't all it's cracked up to be. Starts to regret it, but can't stop. Has his friends, but sees them suffer. Makes mistakes, has no choice but to push them away…."

Vlad was being Vlad, coming up with some psycho story to make Danny think he was crazy, trick him into opening up or something. Plus, this analogy didn't even make any sense. Paul was a soldier, fighting for his country, even though the Germans were the bad guys. He didn't know that, of course, he was just doing what he felt like he needed to do, but—it was WWI, for crying out loud! It didn't translate to his life at all. Except, maybe….

Danny thought of the very last scene he'd read, the scene he'd read aloud in English class. _No, Vlad's crazy. He doesn't know anything, he just wants to get inside your head. Don't let him._

But Vlad was good, and Danny was loopy still. He suddenly very desperately wanted to have his copy of the book. If his miserable existence continued long enough for him to go back to school, he had reading homework to do. And he had to know what happened to Paul and his buddies. If he asked Vlad would probably give him that copy, whether it was Sam's or Tucker's to begin with. This raised more questions in his head. Where were Sam and Tucker now, and why were they here? And here with their bookbags? What role had they played in getting him from doomed on the street to not quite dead under a sheet?

A wave of exhaustion hit Danny. Despite having spent an indefinite amount of time unconscious in the surely long period from street to now, he was tired. This felt like natural sleep, though, and that was a good sign.

Before he knew it, he'd drifted off to the sound of Vlad flipping pages.

…..

Jack couldn't help but notice that Danny kept tugging at his hat.

While Maddie was off retrieving the Fenton Family Ghost Assault Vehicle from the gigantic garage Vlad had had volunteered for it, he'd been tasked with waiting with his son on the snowy curb.

"I knew you'd need something to keep you warm," Jack boasted eagerly for what must have been the third or fourth time, "So while I was waiting for you to wake up, I asked your mom to pick up my knitting supplies, and ouila! A new hat, just for you. It fits okay, right?"

The teen nodded absently. To tell the truth Jack would much rather have gotten the car than stand outside in the cold with his sullen adolescent son, but Maddie had insisted that their injured baby boy did not need to be jostled by Jack's driving, since he was fragile and fragile things need special care. As if Jack didn't know how to handle fragile things! He dealt with breakable stuff all of the time, and he hardly ever broke any of it. He had been about to argue, but then she'd given him fudge. So they said no more about it after that.

 _When does that amazing woman ever find the time to make so much fudge?_ he wondered reverently to himself. However he did suppose that he himself had found time to knit. Danny-boy had been out of it for a good long while, giving him plenty of time to work on the hat and giving Maddie plenty of time to bake when she wasn't stewing or harassing Jazz or Danny's little friends.

The beanie was Jack's favorite shade of orange, the vibrant, newly opened, fresh cheetoh kind. Painstakingly he'd knitted dozens of tiny green ghosts into the brightly colored yarn, floating around the brim of the cap and smiling ghoulish grins.

They'd known that poor Danny's skin would be very sensitive when he woke up, so Jack had made sure to use the softest, comfiest yarn in his possession. The hat was top priority given his newly bald head, but he would also need extra protection from the cold, hence Maddie's bundling him up in seven or so layers of sweaters, jackets, scarves, etc., even for the quick trip home and back to his own bed. He hadn't quite managed to eke out a matching set of mitten in time for the ride home.

Jack sighed and his voice dropped. "You do like the hat, don't you, kiddo?"

The boy in question inhaled slowly and began to nod again before searching his dad's face and realizing that wouldn't be enough. "Yeah, Dad. It's a great hat. Really snazzy."

Now the larger man knew that his son probably wasn't being totally sincere in his praise, but his chest swelled with pride anyway. "I knew you would. I used a new pattern this time actually, worked like a charm…." Several seconds into a detailed description of his creative process, even Jack began to tune out what he himself was saying.

The GAV pulled up not a moment too soon and arguable several minutes late. They heard Maddie put it in park and leap out of the driver's seat to open the door for her son. "Come on inside where it's warm, Danny, your poor skin can't handle a chill like this!" she exclaimed cheerily.

Sluggishly, he did as he was told, and as Jack trailed behind him into the vehicle he exchanged a worried look with his wife. Rather than sitting up front with Maddie, Jack elected to sit next to his son in the passenger area.

It had been so hard to connect with Danny lately. Not just lately, the last several years! It was like the boy got to high school and totally switched personalities or something.

"Looks like it's stopped snowing for a bit," Jack commented once they were in motion, trying and failing to sound nonchalant, "That's good to see."

There was a pause while the two adults gave Danny a chance to respond, and when he didn't Maddie jumped in. "Yeah, you're always dreaming of a white Christmas, but after a certain point it just seems a little excessive. Don't you think so, Danny?"

A noncommittal grunt was his only response.

An uncomfortable creeping feeling invaded Jack's core. He turned his head ever so slightly to keep an eye on Danny but not so much that it was obvious. With any luck the teenager thought he was just really engrossed in the houses they were passing out the window. "I totally agree with the excessive part," he commented quickly. If it were possible to stumble verbally, that was what Jack felt like he was doing. "Too much snow, too much white, too much fluff. It's wet and cold and gross and nobody likes it. Christmas is pretty great though! Man, I love Christmas. Just a couple more days and we'll be waking up to a tree surrounded by tons of presents!"

Danny visibly shuddered, and Jack's spirits fell a bit lower. For no apparent reason, his only son had always hated Christmas. He thought it was an incredibly exciting time, full of songs, cookies, reanimated birds, colorful baubles, presents, and more cookies. He would gladly have eaten all of the cookies himself of course, if he didn't have to share with his family. And Santa, of course. He would never forget Santa.

"Have you made those Christmas tree shaped sugar cookies yet, Mads? Those are always delicious. I could eat them by the dozen! No, the gross!"

"I'm not there quite yet, honey. We've been pretty busy, you know." A hint of strain came through her tone despite the fact that they'd agreed not to talk about, refer to, or even think about work in the presence of Danny. He needed all of their attention, every ounce, and who knew what he would think about their actions towards Phantom after he had supposedly saved him from that robot ghost? Best just to not say anything about it.

But, then again, doesn't a growing boy need cookies? Lots and lots of cookies?

"Oh! And can you be sure to make the Santa-shaped ones too? Those are always so fun to decorate—they got tossed out the window last year before I could have one, so we should probably have twice as many this year." Last year had been a particularly bad year in the never-ending feud over the existence of a certain gift-giving superhuman saint.

His wife's exhale signalled that that request did not make her happy.

"Maybe you can ask Santa to bring you those cookies you like so much, hm?"

"Santa doesn't bring cookies, he eats the ones you lay out for him."

Maddie didn't respond to that, choosing to keep her eyes on the road like a good driver—it was winter after all. Danny, he noticed, was tenser than ever though.

"What's the matter, sweetie?" Maddie seemed to have noticed too, even from up front. "Do you have any special cookie picks you'd like us to whip up for you while you're resting?"

"No thanks."

They were silent for the rest of the ride home. It wasn't that long, really, but it felt like it in the moment. If Jack had been less familiar with the route to Vlad's house or more carefree (that's to say, not concerned about Danny), he would have inevitably popped the dreaded, "Are we there yet?" question. No one liked it when he asked that, because once he started asking he couldn't stop. Time seemed to accelerate onward and onward until each second took hours.

So it was best to stop that bit before it started.

They came to a slow stop in front of Fenton Works eventually, and once the key was out of the ignition Maddie turned back to look at her boys. Jack gave her the most beaming smile he could, but he knew that his eyes did not reflect the joyous sentiment he was trying to portray with his face.

It broke his heart, the dead look in Danny's eyes. Jack never spent much time looking into the eyes of ghosts (and maybe this was why they always looked a little off on his knitting projects—he really needed to pay attention next time he encountered one), but that was sort of how he had always imagined they would look. Empty, belonging to a mere imprint of life. Windows into a spectral projection of the remnants of what had once been a living being, maybe even a human being with hopes, dreams, and fears just like he and his family. But no more. No more did they have emotions, no more did they feel compassion, no more did they know right and wrong. They were merely shells, ghosts. Worse than shells, somehow, maybe holographs or poorly drawn stick figures of that which they could not replicate: life.

His son's eyes should not have looked that way.

As he lead Danny out of the GAV and into the house he continued to dwell on this. Had his eyes been like that for a long time? Certainly not, he would have noticed. He liked to think that he had a pretty good relationship with his son, despite the distance that had grown between them since he'd started high school. No, his eyes most certainly had not been looking like that for very long. This was new.

"Are you in pain, son?" he asked as they came to the stairwell.

The question seemed to jolt Danny out of his own contemplations. "What? No, I'm fine."

"Are you sure? Because, if you're not, we can give you another dose of your pain medication really soon," Maddie offered, pulling the little orange bottle out of her tool belt.

"I'm fine, really. Don't worry about me."

But how could they not?

"Do you need help getting up the stairs?"

"No, I'm fine," he repeated, maintaining a firm grip on the railing as he began to ascend the stairs.

As a child Danny had been such a vibrant little thing. Always running around, constantly in motion. Unless he was looking at the stars, oh how he would just stop and stare at the sky. Stargazing had kind of been his thing with Maddie, but Jack had always relished seeing that look of sheer awe on his son's face whenever they'd have one of their little roof sits. His eyes were always so full of life in those moments. No one could have doubted that that boy was alive, experiencing the world and all that it had to offer fully, joyously.

He was such a happy child. But he had changed once already. Now maybe he had changed again.

No, Jack couldn't let that happen. Last time Danny changed it lead to years of breaking curfews and slipping grades. Now he was barely on track to graduate and had no college prospects for if that even happened. What would happen if he changed again? No, that would be too awful. His future couldn't handle any more slipping, slacking, or stops.

 _You're being silly,_ he told himself internally as he watched his son climb up the stairs towards his bedroom, _He's just sleepy, and he's in pain, I know it. He's just too brave to show it. He's not on the cusp of some personal transformation or downward spiral. He's just tired and hurt, hurt and tired is all._

Yet Jack didn't quite believe himself.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

"Mr. Lancer's crazy if he thinks any of us are going to get all this crap done before break. I swear, we've got about a dozen worksheets, we're supposed to finish that book, then we've got a whole paper on _that,_ eight to ten pages! Eight to _ten_ pages. Ten!"

For a brief moment of what felt like perfect peace, it wasn't snowing. Sam and Tucker were clomping steadily down the lightly dusted sidewalks, enjoying the glow that came from finishing the second to last day of school before winter break as well as the break in precipitation.

"Well, no amount of ranting from you is going to change any of that, so get over it," Sam laughed tiredly, watching as her friend slouched slightly under the weight of his overflowing backpack. "I could've carried some of that, you know," she reminded him, "And I'm sure Danny wouldn't have minded having more time with less homework."

A heartbeat's worth of time passed before Tuck responded, but it felt like longer. Sam was actually making a valiant effort toward joking, which was an amazing thing for her to do any day, but today especially given the circumstances. "Yeah, left it there today and tomorrow, both! Then he'd just have to do it all in forty-eight hours in January." As if it felt possible to plan for such a far away time as January. "Or, even worse, somebody like Mr. Lancer would have to bring it to him!"

"I highly doubt the school would have a teacher drive out here to personally give him his work. It was us or his parents." Another heartbeat's moment. "And I really wouldn't mind carrying it. Don't feel bad, it's not your fault you have the body of a twig and the athleticism of an overweight baby mouse."

Tucker laughed then, emitting a sound that was so close to being genuine it broke Sam's heart even further. "Okay, the twig I'll give you, but an overweight baby mouse? That's just so specific."

"Well it's true. Plus, it's not like I said you had the body of one, just that your ability to perform basic tasks involving strength or agility might be pretty similar. But don't worry…." She paused for effect. "With just a bit of practice, you might catch up!"

They rounded a corner and suddenly the glowing sign declaring "Fenton Works" was in view. Neither friend looked at the other, but they both heard each other take a long, deep breath at the sight of it.

School had been long. School had been hard. All of the teachers were trying to cram in everything they'd had on their schedules to do before break, but a combination of poor time management and excellent distraction skills on behalf of their students had made that feat nearly impossible. The seniors had it even worse; one would think that they'd get a little slack because they were supposed to be working on their college apps and all that jazz, but no one at the institution was apparently smart enough to think of that. That, or they just didn't care.

 _College apps._ Who had time to even remember that colleges existed right now?

Sam's parents had been on her about them for years. Since even before freshman year they'd been hoping and planning to send her to one of the most prestigious institutions, if not an Ivy League then close. But quarter after quarter, semester after semester, year after year, their hopes had slowly withered away right along with her GPA. While she'd managed to never fail a class, unlike Danny who had even less free-time than she did, the whole ghost hunting thing really took a lot of time and energy, time and energy which could (and according to her parents should) have been used on schoolwork. Now she felt like she would probably be safe getting into a state school, but she still hadn't ruled out the possibility of community college just yet.

Tucker had beaten them both; though he had just about as much time as Sam, he had more of a natural talent for school and seemed to care more, which made all the difference.

As they had approximately seven billion times before, Sam and Tucker let themselves into Fenton Works without so much as a knock.

It may have been Sam's imagination, but she could have sworn the house was eerily quiet. It had its usual level of lived-in style messiness, with various jackets and ecto-weapons strewn about on different surfaces, but she couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. Then again, everything had felt quite a bit off lately.

A tiny, effervescent green splotch on the coffee table they passed reminded her all too well of this fact. It was a simple spill, likely the result of Mr. Fenton getting too excited about something and bumping the table while a beaker or something was on it. She'd seen similar evidence of the Fenton's liberal use of ectoplasm as both an experimental substance and a source of ammunition countless times, but recent events made the image more striking than ever.

 _Slippery vibrant green on clear plastic gloves, mingling with bright, terrible vermillion and unnatural tan glops as_ _her stiff fingers_ _struggled to manipulate clingy white gauze around her best friend's shoulder…._

She held the railing for support and shuddered as she ascended the stairs. _Never again._

"Dan-ny!" Tucker called out when they reached the top, huffing and puffing while he prayed that his overloaded backpack would stay on his shoulders for just another minute.

"What the hell, Tuck?"

"I'm just letting him know we're here, I don't wanna startle him…."

"What if he's asleep? Wouldn't you startle him even more if he's asleep?"

"Well, in my defense, it is the middle of the day. Plus, what better way to wake up than to my be-a-uutiful voice. Dan-ny!"

Sam rolled her eyes and took a deep breath as they approached the door to Danny's bedroom. Her legs felt like tightly coiled springs ready to bounce and her heart was palpitating to a tune her very favorite rock-metal band would've thought too intense. _Tucker hasn't done anything wrong,_ she reminded herself silently, _He doesn't deserve me lashing out at him just because I feel like a caged tiger._

Just as Sam was about to turn the doorknob and gain entrance into her best friend's room, a frazzled looking redhead seemed to appear quite instantaneously at her side.

"Woah!" she exclaimed automatically, leaping back quickly while her fingers twitched for where she kept her ectogun.

"Here to bring him his schoolwork?" Jazz asked.

The bags under her eyes made Sam cringe. It was off-putting to see Jazz—usually so put together—looking so, well, not. Her orange mane was frizzy and generally in disarray, as if in their idleness her hands had seen fit to comb through it over and over again until the action became counterproductive to its original purpose.

"Yeah," Tucker replied, letting the strain in his voice come through to make a show of how heavy his load was, "I've got it all in here. Every...single...book!"

"Oh, well that's good," Jazz replied absently. A beat of time passed. "I don't know if he'll want to see you."

It was Sam's turn to huff dramatically. "What do you mean he might not want to see us? Of course he'll want to see us, we're his best friends."

"I just mean, well, I'm not sure he really wants to see anyone. He's hardly said a word since he's been home. To anyone."

"Well if he's conscious he'd better start talking to me, because I want an explanation for what on Earth he was thinking going after Skulker, getting himself caught like that."

"I'm not sure that's what's…"

"And I'll go one further, I want a blood promise that the won't take his spectral ass a step out of this house until he's been given the okay from at least two of the three of us."

Tucker groaned. "Whatever you want to say or do to him, can we please just see him? At least go inside. This backpack is killing me."

 _Overweight baby mouse_ _,_ Sam thought cantankerously, reminding herself to breathe and control her anger. "What he said." And with that she twisted the doorknob and stepped purposefully into the room.

Between the cluttered desk, piles of laundry strewn around the floor, and wall upon wall plus shelf upon shelf of space memorabilia, this room screamed _Danny._ Sam had always been a fan; her room screamed darkness and struggle, and, while she loved that and wouldn't dare change it, it was a pleasant reminder to her that her friend's soul and outlook weren't quite as bleak as hers.

The limp figure in the bed contrasted this reminder quite sharply.

He lay flat on his back with the covers pulled up to his chin. His head was slightly elevated by two fluffy pillows in star and moon pillow cases stacked on top of each other. While his dark hair should've been splayed out over the fabric in matted disarray from his extended resting, every strand of it was markedly absent. His scalp, which by general rules of baldness should've been a shiny dome, was rough and mottled, red and white. His eyes were shut too and only part of one eyebrow remained, and the roughness of his skin reminded her quaintly of a sleeping turtle.

His head tilted nearly imperceptibly toward the door when it opened, then tiredly returned to its original position. His lips pursed as he exhaled slowly, painfully, and his eyes scrunched more tightly shut, which caused a twinge of despair to ignite in the pit of Sam's stomach.

"Hey, Danny," she whispered softly from across the room, not bothering to turn on the light as she approached his bed. He didn't respond.

Tucker followed a few steps behind her and swung his backpack off his shoulders and onto his friend's desk chair first thing before announcing, "We brought you your homework. By we I mostly mean I—after all, I did all of the heavy lifting."

Sam forced a slight smirk to spread across her face. "He was just being an idiot. You know him, won't let the _girl_ help with anything."

No response. Still. Her shoulders slumped as her concern deepened.

Jazz lingered in the doorway, dragging her shaking hand through her hair while she observed the conversation.

If you could even call it a conversation, that is. The word conversation usually implies more of an exchange. Danny didn't even look at Sam and Tucker, let alone respond to them.

"Are you alright, Danny?" Sam asked, kneeling beside the bed so that she'd be at eye level with im. A different brand of panic than usual began bubbling in her stomach; they knew very little about the nature of the Fenton parents' weapon and it's blast. Flashes of Danny on a table in Vlad's lab, bleeding out, red and green, flashed before her mind's eye again, and she wondered if it was possible that there had been some sort of damage to his brain.

When he didn't respond, Sam and Tuck turned to Jazz, silently re-asking the question.

She jerked her head toward the hallway, and they got up to meet her there immediately. "Be right back, Danny," Tucker muttered, adjusting his overflowing backpack for more stability on the desk chair as he left.

The moment Jazz closed the door, Sam deemed it safe to whisper. "What's going on with him? Is he alright? Has he talked at all?"

"Yeah, he's fine. Well, I mean, physically as well as can be expected—as far as I know. He won't say anything to me anymore—he did talk though. I'm convinced he's all there, he's just closed off, uninterested. I imagine, you know, after everything that's happened, that he'd be depressed for sure, traumatized even. I keep trying to tell him that he needs to talk, that he can talk to me. I offered to call you guys so he could talk to you, and that was the only time I actually got a response out of him."

"Why didn't you call us then?" Sam snapped hushedly.

Jazz blushed. "Well, that's the thing, you see." She paused and shifted her gaze between the two of them before continuing. "He didn't want to see you."

"Didn't want to see us? Why not?" Tuck whispered, shocked.

Jazz shrugged. "I don't know. It's not as if I could get him to elaborate very much. I suggested it and he shook his head. I tried to ask why, and said I was going to do it, then he grabbed my arm—not really hard, just, you know, to show he was serious—and told me no."

Sam's chest constricted, and for a moment it seemed that all air had left her lungs. Then anger flew in to replace it.

Tuck gained the strength to speak first. "He didn't want to see us?"

Jazz shook her head. "Apparently not," she clarified, bereft, "But if it makes you feel any better, he doesn't want to see me either. He just wants to lie there, alone."

"He's okay, though, right?," Tuck breathed, "So he can talk, and he knows we're there, he's just being…."

"An asshole," Sam finished for him, crossing her arms over her chest. "After everything we've done for him, he doesn't want to see us? That inconsiderate, mopey…." Her sentence blurred into oblivion as she shook off the urge to shriek.

"I don't know if calling him names is gonna help, Sam."

"Well, I don't know, Tuck, maybe it will? Maybe instead of lying there all day like he's comatose he'd snap out of it and actually interact with somebody!"

"I really don't think that's the best idea," Jazz cautioned her, obviously making a great effort to keep her voice soft and sweet, "In all the things I've read about helping people heal from trauma like this, I've never seen anything about shouting at the person until they 'snap out of it.' At least, not under the reccomended column."

"Maybe it's time for us to conduct a new study. You think we'd get extra credit for that?"

Tucker leaned his face into his hands and shook his head as if he had a headache. "Assuming that shouting is off the table, what do you recommend we do? You are the psych major after all."

Jazz blushed. "Well, I'm really no expert...I mean, I've only taken a few classes, haven't even signed yet, but...I have read a lot of books. My best advice would usually be to do exactly what I've been doing. Talk to him every so often, let him know you're there, but give him space. But, God, I wish it worked much faster. Mom and Dad are getting really worried."

"They should be worried. They shot their son with a mega-death-ray and would've fried him if we hadn't been there." At this point Sam could no longer stand standing still and began to pace in the general area of the hall.

Jazz tilted her head downard and closed her eyes tight, curtains of unkempt red hair falling around her face. "They don't _know_ they did that, though. They have no idea that was Danny that they….that they…" _Gunned down and nearly executed in the middle of a cowed street._

"I get him not wanting to talk to his parents," Tucker said, "But why wouldn't he want to talk to us? We're his best friends, we've stood by him this whole time. When have we ever not helped him? When have we ever tried to hurt him? We've worked so hard…." Sam knew from the haunted look in her friend's eyes that he was remembering the basement of Vlad's mansion, how desperately they all had fought to save his life when his skin seemed to be melting off his very bones. Throwing up in the Packers-themed bathroom in reaction to it all.

"I'm sure it's not anything you two did; you're model friends and confidants," Jazz assured them hurriedly, "I think it has more to do with himself, or, how he sees himself to be more accurate. He's obviously very depressed, very traumatized. I think that he doesn't think he's very deserving of happiness right now, and you two make him happy. Maybe he thinks you guys shouldn't be around him, maybe he doesn't think he deserves the pleasure of your company. That's just my theory."

Sam scoffed. "Well, the world doesn't revolve around him, does it? I'm going in there, and I'm going to make him talk to me."

Jazz immediately launched into a rant about why that was a bad idea, and Tucker reached out a hand as if to stop her, but she had opened the door to Danny's room and stormed in before either of the others could fully register what had happened.

Danny was lying stiffly on his bed, under the covers just as he had been before. His eyes were shut, but his furrowed brow and rigid body were dead-giveaways to the fact that he was not sleeping. He seemed to tense even further as Sam approached, proof that he was either quite aware of his surroundings or that Sam's emotional aura was just very strong, but he neither opened his eyes nor spoke.

Sam opened her mouth to shout at him, but she stopped herself as she got a better look at him. He looked so different from the friend she'd always known. An entire side of his face was reddened and mottled, raised and textured like an enormous scab. She wondered fleetingly if he was lucky he still had eyelids to close.

"Hey," she whispered, freezing as she stood by his bed. "I'm glad to see you're awake." His expression changed only infinitesimally, but she would have sworn he was confused. "You're a terrible actor. Always have been." She cracked a smile and tilted his head, but she couldn't detect any change in his demeanor in response to that statement. "Jazz told Tuck and I you didn't want to see us." A gasp from near the doorway told her that Jazz had heard and was less than pleased. "But we came anyway, of course, and we're still here. We're here because we care about you and we want to help you. You know that, right?"

No response. Sam felt her agitation returning.

"You know, since we are here, it'd be nice if you were too. I—I mean we—didn't come to admire your decor or ask Jazz how her break was going. We came to see you, to talk to you."

"And to bring you your homework," Tucker chimed in, trying to lighten the mood as he approached, "Not that I 100% recommend you do it—you know how crazy teachers get right before Christmas break. This week's a doozy!"

Sam cast an admonishing glare at him through the corner of her eye. The pair waited a good thirty seconds for Danny to say something, do something. Anything. But he didn't. He just lay there, stiff as a board and silent as the grave.

"You're being a huge jerk, you know," she told him, fighting with every moment to keep her voice steady. "We care about you, and all you want to do is be a stubborn idiot. Fine, do it your way. Who needs supportive friends, huh?" She turned to leave and hoped to hear a shift behind her, maybe an abnormal exhale, any sign that Danny didn't really want her to go. She paused in the doorway, and, without looking back, uttered through barred teeth, "See you tomorrow."

She shoved past Jazz and took the stairs two at a time as she fled, wiping stupid, angry tears from her eyes. _This hurts. God, this really hurts._

As she rounded a corner to head towards the front door, she found her path suddenly obstructed by a wall of orange.

"Woah!" the wall exclaimed, "Oh, hey Sam. I didn't know Danny had you and Tucker over. I assume Tucker's here, anyway. You three—always inseparable."

Jack Fenton was not a man she wanted to see right then. Just looking at him, standing there, a smile on his face, brought back flashes of that horrible night when he stood, grim as a ghost, armed and dangerous, over the tortured, nearly-destroyed body of his dying son.

"I was just leaving, she mumbled," pushing past him towards the door.

She'd intended to wait for Tuck in the foyer, since she couldn't imagine him spending much more time telling jokes no one but him would laugh at to a person who didn't want to hear them. Now, though, all she could think of doing was escaping.

The stark whiteness of the outdoors burned her eyes, and she cursed the snow for showing itself, making the bright white brighter. She stumbled down the slippery steps onto the sidewalk and spun around to observe her familiar surroundings. How many times had she and Tuck walked to this house, how many times with Danny in tow? How many days in the summer had they spent lounging around in this vicinity, how many nights more recently had they met here before dispersing for patrol? How many times had she laughed with her friends on these steps, opened the door to the pleasing smell of Mrs. Fenton's freshly baked cookies?

 _Will it ever be the same?_

This was the question Sam couldn't avoid, the one that swirled around in her brain, endlessly, endlessly, until the very fragments of sound which composed it were sharply magnified and grossly distorted, taking up every inch of thought-space she had.

She told herself to slow down, slow down and breathe. Tears were evil things, sick things that betrayed her every time they fell, and she willed them to stay back. Rather than internally yelling at them, she decided to focus simply on breathing deeply, which over the years was slowly proving more effective.

When Tuck did emerge from the Fenton household a couple minutes later, she was composed and ready for a sullen, abnormally silent walk home.

…..

Jazz couldn't sleep that night. She hadn't slept very well the night before, nor had she the night before that. Theoretically the exhaustion would build until she could finally get a peaceful eight hours in, but for her it seemed to come in bursts. One second she'd be so tired she felt like she could just fall over, the next she'd be too hyped up to sit. That's how she ended up, at two in the morning, lurking outside her little brother's bedroom door.

A weak smile formed briefly on her face as she thought about her little brother, specifically that not-so-long-ago time when he was actually little. Sometimes, on nights fraught with thunder or nights after he'd watched a too-scary movie, he used to show up at her door, clutching his favorite blanket, eyes teary, asking if he could stay with her for the night because he was scared but didn't want to wake their parents.

The smile faded away when she remembered all the times she'd turned him away. Not every time. But sometimes, when she was feeling particularly irritable with the excitable child she often saw as a nuisancef, she'd snapped at him and told him to let her sleep. She would have done anything to go back in time, to every moment she ever refused to offer him emotional support, and do it right. But it was too late.

Now he didn't want her emotional support. He might need it, sure, but he refused it, rejected it. Rather than seeking help, he acted as if he simply had no emotions at all, when she knew he was actually drowning.

 _You're drowning too,_ she reminded herself, her internal voice haunted and echoing. Usually she'd take solace in her books, and if those didn't work then her parents, but both were useless in the current situation. None of the books had the answers she wanted, since their favorite one was to wait, and she knew her mother at least was still furious over the whole hiding her gravely injured son at Vlad Masters' house thing.

She couldn't exactly blame her; if she were her mother and knew only the things her mother knew, she'd be furious too. But she knew things her mother didn't know, things her mother couldn't know….

A low, raspy sound came from beyond the other side of the door. Heart racing, hands shaking, Jazz slowly twisted the doorknob and prodded open the door.

The sight she was met with broke a piece inside her. Her little brother, not so little anymore, was curled into a tight ball under his covers, shaking gently. Light from nearby street lamps flowed in through the window, casting a pale glow on the boy and illuminating the wetness of his face.

Her first instinct was to freeze, maybe call their parents. But a more powerful, intelligent yet still automatic urge overcame that one, and she swept toward him with a level of sureness she hadn't felt in a long time.

The broken, weeping figure didn't appear to notice her approach, but when she sat down beside him he jumped and whirled around to look at her, hands outstretched as if they should have been preparing ecto-blasts. The contortion of his remaining half of an eyebrow, the wideness of his almost childlike blue eyes, and the grimace that was his mouth melted away the moment he saw her.

His eyes squeezed shut as tears fell from them and his entire face was distorted into the very portrait of a sob. She expected him to shout at her to get out and push her away, but instead he merely bent over himself and covered his face with his hands.

"I'm sorry," he lamented, "Sorry—" He cut himself off with a choking cry.

At a loss for what else to do, she reached out and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, taking great care to be gentle of his still-tender skin.

"Sh, it's okay…." she told him, keeping her voice as quiet and as calm as she could. Given the circumstances, this should have been a nearly insurmountable task, but she attributed the ease with which she did it to the fact that Danny was freaking out. Somehow, when one person is distraught, it makes it easier for the other to keep their head.

"No, 's never gonna be okay!" he protested. She patted his back gently and continued to shush him, but he wasn't done. "How could it ever be okay? Can never be okay…."

"We'll get through this, you'll see. Look how far we've come already, after all this you came through. You're still here, we're still here with you. It'll be okay."

He shook his head vigorously. "How? Even if I weren't….if I weren't…." He moved his hands away from his face and looked at himself, examined his scarred arms and neck, ran his fingers over his newly bald scalp. "Even….if I were fine…I'd still have….still have…." A powerful shudder overcame him and he launched himself into a new outburst.

Jazz's heart clenched tight, and she tightened her grip on him. "Sh, it'll be okay, you're okay, it's all okay…." Danny flinched a bit, and she pulled away to look at him.

He took a deep, shaky breath and tried to compose himself enough to speak clearly. "I'm not okay, though, Jazz. Look at me, I'm broken, a—monster." His voice dropped at the last word and he took another breath before continuing. "Before I was it but you couldn't always see—now, you can see it, everybody can see it. And it's right, they should see it. It's right, but I _hate_ it."

"Danny, I'm sure this'll all clear up, you'll heal. You've always healed fast."

Bereft, he shook his head. "As if that matters—but that's another thing." He extended a trembling hand outward and flexed his fingers as if to conjure an ecto-blast or an ice shard, but again nothing happened. "My powers—it's like they're gone. I don't know if they're really gone or if they're there and I just can't get to them. But, I've got nothing either way." He wiped his nose on his sleeve and collapsed onto his back. "Maybe that's for the best too. It's what I deserve, and it's safer this way."

Jazz was getting more and more confused, feeling more and helpless. She held desperately to the psychologist persona she'd built up in her head and tried to think of a way to lead the conversation in a helpful direction. Or maybe it was just to help her understand.

"Does that make you feel better?" she asked, composed with only a hint of apprehension.

He thought for just a beat before answering. "No. No, my powers may have been what I used to—to do what I did. But the real, the real reason, the real cause, that was me. All me. _I_ did that. No matter what I look like, no matter what I can _do_ now….that never won't be true."

"That doesn't make you a bad person, though," she whispered, staring into his eyes with as much love and faith as she could muster, "You aren't a bad person, you try so hard, do so much good, and you've sacrificed so much to do it. One mistake doesn't change that."

He laughed a hollow, bitter laugh. "Doesn't it, though? I tried hard, I worked hard, and I messed up hard. What I did—there's no fix. No way back, it's just it, it's just done. And I'm done too." He convulsed in a half-laugh, half-sob episode after he barely managed to finish his sentence. And she couldn't get a coherent word out of him for the rest of the night.

All she could do was be there, hug him. Truly, she had no words.

 **Author's Note: Hey, guys, I know it's been like forever. I've got the rest of the story outlined, and there will be at least four more chapters. We're getting back to a spot with action soon, so hold on. Let me know what you're thinking in a review if the urge strikes, I'd appreciate it.**


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